


This Is A Shit Mission

by BarqueBatch



Series: Continuum [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Badass Bucky & Steve, Bucky's had time to adjust and heal... mostly, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Fury's in so much trouble, Los Angeles is so screwed, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Snarking at each other like an old married couple, Zombie-centric violence, Zombie-specific gore and relative grossness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:07:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 65,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarqueBatch/pseuds/BarqueBatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fury sends Bucky and Steve to Los Angeles to escort a biochemical analyst safely to her plane ride back to Stark Industries.<br/>Nothing goes the way it should and Steve and Bucky find themselves caught in a situation that quickly deteriorates. Amid the chaos, they begin to question their place in each other's life.</p><p> <br/>“Yeah we’re gonna have a serious talk with Fury when we get back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Are you fuckin' kidding me?"

**Author's Note:**

> Shit Mission has its first official fan art! Shaish did this adorable sketch for Chapter 5. Send her love for it here:  
> http://shaishart.tumblr.com/post/101037233534/fanart-for-this-is-a-shit-mission-by-barquebatch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story is what happens when prompt plot bunnies explode. What started as two chapters became ten, and then it became a four part series. Enjoy kiddos!

Bucky adjusted his comm and glanced over at his best friend. Steve was checking his own comm along with his bag of gear, his brows furrowed down into a deep scowl. That was warning enough for most people to steer clear of Steve but Bucky didn’t fall into the category of most people. He was immune to Steve’s scowl… mostly.

“So why are we being handed this shit mission again?”

Steve didn’t look up. “Fury said she was important enough to warrant our  particular brand of heroics .”

The emphasis didn’t impress Bucky at all.   
  
“You sure he didn’t actually mean our particular brand of stupidity?” he cracked as he took control of the small private plane. They were to touch down in Burbank, then reach their destination via the armored SUV that SHIELD had waiting for them.    
  
“Why couldn’t Stark, Barton or Romanov pull this?”

There hadn’t been anything in Los Angeles that appealed to Bucky in particular, but Fury had promised them some time off in exchange for completion of this current mission. Steve liked the idea of going to the beach and maybe visiting the Getty Museum. He’d tempted Bucky into accepting the mission by talking about Griffith Observatory, the California Science Center, and hiking through the mountains. He’d brought along his sketchpad with the intention of capturing anything different from New York that inspired him.

“He also needs us to be as stealthy as possible.”

“So no Stark,” Bucky snorted. “No Thor, either. He’s not exactly subtle. Romanov and Barton could do this though. They’re spies.”

“Yeah that…” Steve came into the cockpit and flopped down into the co-pilot’s chair with a heavy sigh. “That’s where my eyes are crossing a little bit.”

Few people ever got to see Steve flop anywhere. He was absurdly professional around the other Avengers, though Romanov and Wilson were closer to being actual friends than any of them. Romanov took their friendship to mean it was okay for her to perpetually try hooking Steve up with women. It annoyed Bucky beyond reason. Not because she did it. Bucky used to do the same, but that was when women couldn’t see past his frail physique. Now women still couldn’t see past it. They wanted Steve to be like the idiot on those romance novel covers and that was definitely never going to happen. Steve was intelligent and, while he loved helping people, he also wished people would more actively help themselves. The PR machine always kept that facet of Steve’s personality under wraps. There was a lot of Steve that Captain America never allowed to bleed through. He’d be there to help someone every step of the way until he saw that they weren’t doing their part, then the patented Steve Rogers Looks of Deep Disapproval kicked in. Bucky’d been treated to one or two during the war and they always made him feel like he needed to go read a Bible passage, find an old lady to help across a street and volunteer for dish duty…all while waving an American flag. It was annoying, but it still made him try to do better somehow and that was always good enough for Steve.

“Yeah, your eyes cross and most people start feeling like kicked puppies,” Bucky mused, casually roaming his eyes over the gauges. His Winter Soldier training meant he could fly pretty much anything with wings or rotors. Handy when it meant they didn’t have to trust anyone else but each other on a mission like this. “It says a lot about Fury that he’s immune to your pouting.”

“Pouting? Bucky, I don’t pout.”

“Yeah you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“It’s okay. You pout very patriotically, Stevie,” Bucky grinned.

“God, you’re a jerk,” Steve sighed with a subtle eye roll, though there was the faintest upward twitch to his lips.

Bucky actually laughed aloud at that, something that was thankfully becoming less of a novelty the longer he was around Steve again.    
  
“Anyway, you were saying… crossed eyes…”

“Yeah… uh, apparently there’s some kind of illness that’s popped up. Only a few cases so far but apparently pretty scary stuff. Fury didn’t have much detail on-”

“Yes, he fucking well does,” Bucky cut in irritably. “Steve, you know better than that.”

“Yeah, Buck, I do but he’s not giving them to me so…” He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes again, more dramatically this time.

“I could get it out of him,” Bucky grinned with faux sweetness and Steve put his hands up.

“Oh I’m sure you could eventually but then you’d have the whole of the Avengers wanting your head.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Bucky muttered with a shrug of his own, and then The Look hit him.

“But there’s no brainwashing to offer up now,” Steve replied. “They’d actually kill you this time. I couldn’t even protect you from that.”

Bucky winced at that but said nothing. This was why he still wasn’t on a first name basis with anyone outside of Steve. He still caught wary eyes flickering his way and he couldn’t really blame them. Joking as he had to Steve probably didn’t help much but it was either that or let the guilt consume him again and he couldn’t function that way. He couldn’t watch Steve’s back like that.

“Relax, Steve,” he sighed, giving his right shoulder a roll to loosen it back up. “I was joking. I’m no danger to them unless they become a danger to you.”

Steve’s shoulders also relaxed at Bucky’s reassurance and he seemed a little ashamed of himself. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, Buck.”

“Don’t worry about it. Illness… I’m guessing fatal if it’s got Fury’s attention.”

“Yeah. Fury said one hundred percent fatality rate as of now,” Steve answered, bringing a scowl to Bucky’s lips. “This biochemist, Ella Aubrey, she was in the right place at the right time to start noticing similarities in the cases even though they were random and widespread.”

“Sounds more like the wrong place at the wrong time.” The look Bucky gave Steve warned his childhood friend that he was sorely tempted to turn the plane around and go have words with Fury.

“Yeah, maybe,” Steve allowed, “but Fury’s worried she’s on HYDRA’s radar now. He thinks this could be them trying to weed out the population again, though we don’t have anything beyond conjecture at this point.”

“That you know of.”

“That I know of, yeah.”

They exchanged a wary look.

“This sucks,” Bucky growled.

“Pretty much, yeah, but who else can handle it as well as us, Buck?”

Bucky genuinely resented the question. He still felt like he had a lot to atone for, but he was also pretty fed up with half truths and bureaucracy, and this mission reeked of both. Steve knew that because Bucky had bitched about it fairly regularly lately.

“How are people catching this? Airborne?”

“Don’t know. Tony augmented your mask and made one for me to filter the air just in case.”

They were at cruising altitude so Bucky engaged the autopilot so he could turn fully to look over at Steve. “Oh this sucks even worse than I thought. Fury’s not sending us because we can be stealthy. It’s because  we might have a better chance at surviving if we’re exposed to whatever this is.”

“That was mentioned briefly… yeah,” Steve admitted almost sheepishly. “This chemist we’re picking up managed to get good blood samples before one of the patients died. Fury asked if we’d both give blood samples to her so she can run tests against the infected blood.”

“What?” His expression turning sourly incredulous, Bucky shook his head. “I’m not being poked and prodded again, Steve. Not when it won’t fucking matter for shit.”

“Won’t matter…?” Steve blinked back at him in surprise, his jaw slacking. “How could it not matter, Buck?”

“Because even if this chemist manages some breakthrough from our blood samples, so what? The rest of the population aren’t like us. They don’t have the serum and there’s no more serum left that we know of. What’s she accomplished then? One big, fat fucking nothing and no scientist is getting anywhere near me for that.”

“Biochemist.”

“I don’t  care , Steve!”

Steve watched Bucky’s face grow darker through his rant, looking progressively sadder with each phrase. His eyes told Bucky that he realized the true source of Bucky’s tense anger. To someone else it would have sounded selfish and callous but Steve knew where Bucky’s real headspace was at when he blurted out rants like this.

“You don’t have to give blood, Buck. Not at all. I’ll do it and it’ll be enough. If she does manage something with it, it can likely be synthesized. If she can’t, then it’ll be disappointing but she’ll still have learned something… at least I hope so.”

Bucky stared at Steve without speaking at first before he finally lowered his eyes and looked back to the clouds around them. There was genuine shame rolling his guts around as he rubbed his hand over his face.

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

“God, Bucky, don’t be,” Steve huffed softly, bowing his own head to look down at his hands. “No one could ever blame you for not ever wanting to see another needle or scientist or chemist or… any of that. I can’t even imagine. I don’t really want to. Makes me sick to my stomach, what they did to you… and I don’t even know all of it.”

“And you never will,” Bucky muttered under his breath, his eyes hardening again as his stomach gave a more violent roll. Silence permeated the cockpit for a good, solid half hour before Bucky finally spoke again. When he did, his voice was soft and hesitant.

“Do you know how to draw blood?”

Steve’s head turned slowly toward his best friend. “No… but I’ll learn if it’ll help.”

“If you can manage it, I’ll do it.”

Bucky felt more than saw Steve looking over at him, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. He heard the undertone of concern as Steve made an attempt at levity.    
  
“Might be kinda shitty for you. I’m no nurse.”

“You mean shittier than having a stranger come at me with a needle? I’ll deal with it.” Bucky’s eyes shifted toward the co-pilot chair and he laughed in an attempt to ease Steve’s worry. 

“You gonna wear a nurse hat for me?”

“No one wears those anymore, Buck…” His words dissolved into laughter over what was probably an absurd mental image. It certainly was for Bucky.    
  
“Shut up.” The air was lighter again between them as Steve glanced over at his pilot again. “You know, you swear a lot more than you used to.”

Bucky’s face skewed a bit, his eyes darting to the side for a second before he shook his head. “No I don’t. I just swear different now.”

“Yeah, the f-bombs are  plent-i-ful ,” Steve chuckled, raising his voice to something almost girly as he said the last word. It caused Bucky’s nose to wrinkle almost comically.

“Are you the propriety police now, Steve?”

“God no,” Steve practically snorted, “just making an observation. You always had a coarse mouth at times… it’s just gotten a little filthier is all.”

His eyes scanning the clouds again, Bucky’s brows dipped into a mild frown. “Yeah well I think I’ve earned the right to  express myself freely , don’t you?”

Steve’s grin was nearly bursting off his face as he looked over at Bucky and just shrugged. Bucky groaned and punched his arm, and Steve had the audacity to giggle.

“Punk. You giggle like a girl.”

“Well you hit like one.”

**************************************************************************************

The rest of the trip in the plane had consisted of them actually laughing a lot and it had felt good. It didn’t erase the feeling of unease Steve had in his gut over this assignment, but it did lighten their mood a bit in spite of it. They transferred their gear into the SUV and Bucky tossed the keys at him. He hated driving in Los Angeles.

“I flew. You drive.”

“Shit.” Steve’s mouth twisted sourly and he jiggled the keys as he climbed into the driver’s side. Bucky was already pushing his seat back and reclining it, intent upon catching a cat nap.

“I gotta get my pilot’s license.” He looked at Bucky who was already comfortable with a slight smile softening his lips. “A nap? We’re only ten miles from the tower, Buck.”

“Ten miles that’s gonna take a freaking hour,” Bucky drawled back at him. Steve barely managed not to smile that Bucky avoided dropping the f-bomb again. “Which is why it wouldn’t matter if you did get your license. I refuse to drive here so… night night, Stevie.”

“It’s not gonna take an hour. We’re here after rush traffic. Thirty minutes tops.”

The snort of disbelief leveled at him had Steve gritting his teeth as he pulled out of the parking area and approached the toll booth. He forked over his SHIELD-issued credit card and gave the attendant a weary nod when it was handed back with a goofy grin. It was debatable as to whether he’d ever get used to random strangers looking at him like that. Today the repartee with Bucky kept his mood light enough not to feel suffocated by it, even if Bucky was reverting a bit back to his Brooklyn diva spiel.

“Hour. Fifty bucks, punk. Sixty minutes  at least .”

“If it gets you to quit whining, then deal.” Bucky huffed a soft laugh, his eyes still closed. Steve reached over and socked him in the leg. “Uh uh, shake on it, jackass.”

His blue eyes flying wide with surprise, a full bodied laugh still rolled from Bucky’s chest. “Jackass?!” He continued to laugh as he licked his palm and grabbed Steve’s hand before he could withdraw it. Steve grimaced and pulled free to wipe his hand off on his pantleg.

“That’s just as disgusting as it’s ever been, Bucky.”

“And you still don’t learn, do ya, punk?” Bucky grinned as he settled back into his seat and closed his eyes. Steve rolled his, but the smile creeping over his features was contented as warmth spread through his chest. This was how it was always supposed to be, how it should have been; them against the world. A solid unit remodeled and fortified.

***************************************************************

An hour and ten minutes later Steve was ready to let out a swearfest of his own when Bucky held his hand out silently. He dug into his pocket and slapped two twenties and a ten into Bucky’s hand who let out a girly giggle of his own. There’d been a nasty accident on the 101 freeway and it took them forever to reach the 110 interchange. There’d been no point trying to get off on side streets because that’s what everyone else was doing. As they finally reached the accident site and were being maneuvered around it by CHP officers, Steve heard Bucky’s stunned voice trickle out.

“Jesus…”

The Honda Civic had taken a bad blow and had spun into the cement divider. The firemen had jaws of life on the door to remove it, but that wasn’t what had Bucky staring. Compared to some of the things they’d both seen this was low on the gore scale, but as Steve glanced over he saw the trapped driver violently convulsing and throwing up. He didn’t notice the windshield being cracked, but it had to be severe head trauma of some sort.

“Must’ve hit the steering wheel,” Steve mumbled, just as disconcerted by the sight as Bucky. “There’s no airbag deployed.”

“Poor bastard,” Bucky muttered, unable to tear his eyes away. He finally turned back and raised his seat to normal once Steve was on the connecting ramp for the 110. In no time they were on 4th Street about to turn south on Grand. Both of them frowned at an ambulance that was facing the wrong way on Grand while paramedics tended to what appeared to be a pedestrian injured in the crosswalk.

“Busy evening,” Steve wondered aloud and Bucky shook his head.

“Fucking Angelinos and their cars,” he grunted. Steve could have argued that people drove just as stupid in New York, but here the congestion wasn’t as bad so the accidents seemed more senseless when they happened. He also realized they had an outsider’s opinion which was never fully-informed or fair.

Steve pulled the SUV into the subterranean parking structure beneath the US Bank Tower. These types of underground areas never failed to creep Steve out a little. There were seventy-seven levels of glass, steel, concrete, marble and who-knew-what-else above their heads in the midst of earthquake country. Yes, it was built to withstand an 8.3 and Steve could quote statistics about the deformation tolerance of the tower’s walls but he and Bucky were both well-acquainted with things that were supposed to happen that just didn’t. Painfully so.

“Don’t forget the helipad,” Bucky laughed under his breath. Being underground didn’t bother him. The skyscraper above them didn’t bother him. The earthquake factor definitely did bother him.

“What?”

“You keep glancing at the ceiling. You’re running stats in your head. Three levels of garage, seventy-three floors, plus the helipad above us. What’s the earthquake coding on this little gem again..?”

“8.3 and wow, thanks Buck. You’re a real peach today, you know that?”

Bucky’s laughter echoed off the concrete walls as he shouldered his pack and lifted his duffel. They’d be going in civilians and coming out guard dogs. “I am here to continually illuminate your life, Stevie. Remember that.”

“Yeah, that’s how I’m gonna introduce you to our biochemist, as my personal illumination. She’ll believe it, right?”

“Of course,” Bucky grinned, giving Steve a gentle shove to the side. “Tell her you can’t do without me because rays of sunshine perpetually shoot out of my ass. I’ll even smile for effect when you say.”

Steve might have laughed at Bucky’s crass comment if not for events earlier in the week. “I don’t want to talk about anything shooting outta anyone’s ass after Wednesday’s shawarma,” he winced. Bucky actually winced along with him and subconsciously rubbed at his gut.

“Uh yeah, when it’s too spicy even for two super soldiers, Stark needs to reel it back in.”

************************************************************************

Poking the button marked 53, Bucky stepped back and leaned against the wall of the elevator with his bicep resting against Steve’s. His jacket and glove hid the metal but Steve gave him a nudge with his shoulder and nodded downward.

“The red star is starting to wear off on your shoulder.”

“Good,” Bucky grunted, his eyes cooling to the deadened blankness that Steve despised seeing. It wasn’t who Bucky was anymore; the gaze was a mask he slid behind to hide his true opinions or feelings and Steve hated it.

“You know we could just strip that paint off any time you want,” Steve offered quietly. Bucky’s eyes flared slightly then he retreated again, but his voice didn’t carry quite the hard edge of before.

“Nah. Not worth the effort. Just let it wear off on its own.”

Steve nodded slowly, treading carefully. “Gonna just leave it blank?”

“Hadn’t thought about it one way or the other,” Bucky answered just as carefully, which told Steve he’d actually been thinking about it a lot. Knowing not to push too much, Steve shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

“Well ya got your own personal artist if you decide to throw a little attitude on there.”

A soft smile tugged at Bucky’s lips. “I’ll think about it.”

The elevator pinged and they stepped into the hallway only to stop short in their tracks. Two men were laying prone on the floor and not looking all that alive. There were dark blotches on the carpet near their mouths that could have been anything. Bucky shoved Steve back into the elevator and hit the stop to hold it. He dropped his duffle to the floor and yanked out his mask and goggles.

“Now, Steve.”

It was all he said but it shocked Steve into action. He dropped to one knee and pulled his own mask and goggles out. 

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Buck?”

“Likely,” came the gruff reply. “Guy in the accident?”

“Yeah,” Steve huffed. “I think you were right; this really is a shit mission.”

Bucky’s eyes met his before he put on his goggles. “You might wanna let me take the lead on this one, Steve. I’ve dealt with chemical warfare situations before… HYDRA released a toxin in a small town outside of Kolomyya to test it… Until we know what this is, we treat it with the same protocol.”

Steve stared back at Bucky but he knew plainly what Bucky wasn’t saying aloud. There would only be one reason to send the Winter Soldier in and that would be to wipe out anyone that survived the toxin after it was tested. A handful of survivors would be rounded up to be used as lab rats for perfecting the chemical and the rest would be what haunted Bucky’s nightmares.

“Okay,” he agreed, bringing his mask up to his face. He fastened the straps and then put the goggles on. At first the room looked too dark but Bucky reached out and tapped a small button and everything adjusted. It was as though he had normal glasses on, though the colors were actually more vibrant now.

“That’s polarized,” Bucky instructed. He brought Steve’s hand up and put his fingertip to the goggle’s side frame to show Steve where each button was. “That one is night vision. The third is infrared.”

“Got it,” Steve answered. “Should we just suit up now?”

Bucky shook his head in the negative. “Let’s get to our biochemist’s room first. If she’s dead, we get those blood samples, suit up and get the hell out of here. If she’s alive we do the same and round her up with the samples. Bottom line though-”

“We get the hell outta here,” Steve frowned, pulling his shield from its bag. The bag looked like an oversized suit bag to keep from drawing unnecessary attention. Steve didn’t even bother with the bag now. He had others back home and it would be one less thing to carry. He reached into his duffel and pulled out his shoulder harness and a thigh holster. Once both were fastened, he hooked his shield onto its magnetic catch then pulled a handgun from its case. He secured it into its holster and nodded to Bucky as he lifted their duffel bags.

“Okay, let’s go. Her room should be at the end of the hall.”

Bucky nodded, but paused after he pried the elevator doors open. “I know this isn’t going to sit well with you, Steve, but you might have to put someone down if they come at you foaming at the mouth.” His voice was muffled by the mask but the weight of regret in the words still carried. It wasn’t hard to imagine the shadow of sadness in Bucky’s eyes either. He’d seen it enough in their youth and he’d seen it return at times in the months after Bucky’s return. “I know these are civilians but they’re now potentially deadly civilians.”

“If it’s them or us… I’ll do what I need to,” Steve responded somberly. His words drew a sharp nod from Bucky before he turned to exit the elevator. Steve switched his ear comm back on when he saw Bucky do the same.

“Steve,” Bucky murmured quietly.

“Bucky,” Steve confirmed that he heard Bucky’s voice clearly, the voice-activated mics in their masks automatically syncing up with the comm units in their ears. His fingertips trailed over the Sig Sauer in his thigh holster as his gut knotted up. The Sig had been a gift from Bucky for his birthday. He had his own gun prior, but Bucky had insisted that the other model was a piece of shit even if it was made by Stark Industries. Now he was glad for it, the extra weight of the handgun feeling oddly reassuring. Whether it was really that or just the fact that Bucky deemed it worthy was a toss up.

They made their way past the two bodies and to the end of the curved hall. Steve squeezed his eyes shut for a moment when they reached their biochemist’s door. It was slightly ajar with faint scratches shoulder high in the wood. Bucky looked over his shoulder at Steve and his voice whispered into Steve’s ear.

“Name again?”

“Ella Aubrey.”

Bucky’s attention shifted forward again. He slowly pushed open the door and froze when it creaked. He shook his head ruefully, and Steve knew he was cursing the decision to arrive out of uniform. Knowing Bucky, he undoubtedly had something in his compartmentalized belt to silence squeaky hinges. There was no way to predict this, though Bucky would argue missions weren’t about predicting anything. You went in prepared for anything, so when it happened you weren’t caught with your proverbial pants around your proverbial ankles. Steve had learned a lot from Bucky during the war and even more after joining the Avengers, but there were times he still felt like half the soldier Bucky was. Watching him move so silently and fluidly right now made Steve’s skin prickle with awe. He wasn’t even in full gear either, just jeans, his sniper boots, a light thermal shirt and the black motorcycle style jacket from his Winter Soldier uniform. Steve had asked him months ago why he kept the uniform and was surprised to find out that it was designed to Bucky’s requested specifications, not HYDRA’s. It was the one thing they allowed him to take control of and, rather than set it all aflame, Bucky was determined to take his design into the light along with his recovering conscience.

They moved further into the room with Steve keeping his attention focused behind them as Bucky’s gaze silently took in the seemingly empty room. Steve turned back in time to catch the subtle tilt of Bucky’s head. He pointed to the bathroom door and moved beyond it, leaving it for Steve to clear. Steve cautiously eased the shower curtain aside then tapped his comm twice to indicate it was empty. When he stepped back into the main room, Bucky was just easing open the closet door.

He grunted as something hit him and took a fast step backward, falling into defensive stance. Then he lunged forward into the closet. Steve’s head snapped back and forth between the commotion in the closet and the door to the hallway. Bucky grunted again in his ear, obviously taking another hit but then he backed out into the room clutching a kicking, flailing woman. He kept his hand over her mouth while he attempted to calm her, not that it was likely doing anything for her state of mind. There was an angry red blotch near Bucky’s temple where she apparently got in a lucky swipe. He looked down and gaped a little at the mini baseball bat lying on the closet floor and flinched a little. Just because they healed quick didn’t mean shit like that didn’t hurt.

“Quiet down,” Bucky ordered, his voice low but carrying the weight of his former military rank. “It’s James Barnes and Steve Rogers.”

Her breathing ragged behind Bucky’s hand, she slowly stopped fighting him but her eyes were still terrified as she looked at Steve. He decided he had to at least lose the goggles until they got her calmed down and assessed the situation. Her reaction was instantaneous and she tugged at Bucky’s hand. He lowered his grip to her upper arm.

“Captain Rogers,” she whispered. Steve held up his hands and shook his head.

“Please… just Steve is fine. That’s Bucky behind you. You’re Ella Aubrey, right?”

She actually sagged backward against Bucky, clearly more than relieved to see they’d reached her safely. “Yes. I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”

Not bothering to respond directly to her concern, Bucky’s lips pursed as he stepped away from her and bent down to pick up the bat.

“Do you always carry these with you when you travel?”

“I caught a Dodgers game last night. That’s for my godson.” She rubbed at the back of her neck but still caught the incredulous look Bucky shot at Steve. 

“Hey, that was before thirty new cases popped up last night. Today twelve more showed up. When the first cases showed up, the turnaround time was a day. This week we started seeing cases where the turnaround time was four or five hours. Now it’s looking like thirty minutes to an hour.”

“So we’re looking at nationwide infection in what… a week,” Bucky asked, still keeping his voice low. Ella let out a strained laugh and turned to look at him.

“No we’re looking at global infection in maybe three days tops.”

Bucky yanked his goggles free and stared at her. “Three days.” She nodded solemnly and he snapped his eyes upward to Steve.

“Steve…”

“Yeah,” Steve acknowledged sharply as he tossed their duffel bags onto the bed and started pulling out their gear, “on it.” 

They both started to change into their uniforms, neither concerned whether their chemist was bothered by it. She sat down on the edge of the bed and averted her eyes. It wasn’t shocking, but she seemed to think it inappropriate to gawk at the two men who were there to get her the hell out of Dodge.

Steve noticed her discomfort, but what concerned him more was the way her eyes were starting to glaze over. Shock would help no one so he initiated more questions. “Fury wouldn’t tell me much, but things are a little more dire now so how about you fill us in?”

It took a moment, but then her eyes cleared slightly. “There were six simultaneous cases across the US. Hoboken, Cleveland, Orlando, Austin, Long Beach, and SeaTac. No one noticed initially until the patients died and their charts were sent in to the CDC. They didn’t actually catch it. They sent the data to us and five of the cases just happened to cross my desk close together otherwise I might not have caught it either. By the time the sixth came through, I was already on the phone with the individual hospitals and the staff. All but two of the doctors involved just had gut instinct to submit the cases. The other two blew them off as severe flu.”

“What made you think it wasn’t flu,” Bucky asked as he snapped the straps on his one-sleeved jacket. He caught her staring at his arm but she didn’t seem surprised by it. Her eyes were on him, but her actual focus was clearly elsewhere.

“People don’t die from the flu in a day,” she replied simply. “One is a fluke. Six in six major areas across the country gets my attention.”

“You said the cases were speeding up,” Steve asked. “Why do you think that is?”

“It could be mutation or it could be genetic code. I don’t know yet. This thing is just… unreal. I contacted Nick because I don’t believe I’m being paranoid when I say it seems deliberate. I believe whatever this is was engineered and intentionally released into these cities. Orlando’s victim got sick at Disneyworld, so you can imagine how many more cases we’ve got showing up in Florida now-”

“Hoboken,” Steve questioned, cutting her off. “Why not New York? Hell of a lot more people there if you’re wanting to spread this thing quick.”

“My only guess is whoever released this wanted it to stay under the radar as long as possible. Once people like me notice, measures start being put into place. Lockdowns, quarantines, public service mandates… none of those are things you want if you want to decimate a population.”

“Sounds like HYDRA wanting to pick back up where Insight failed.” Bucky’s grumbled words were like a kick in the gut to Steve.

“But this could be so much worse. This could wipe out everything, not just those against HYDRA. What could they possibly hope to gain?”

“King of the playground?” His eyes flicking sideways toward Ella, Bucky seemed to size her up. “How contagious is this and do you even have any clue of how to treat it?”

“It’s insanely contagious but, thank god, it’s not airborne. There has to be a full transfer of fluids. I don’t think a sneeze in the face will do it but internalized saliva or blood… definitely.” Standing suddenly from the bed, Ella went to her bag and pulled a blood draw kit. “Nick said I should take blood samples from you both-”

“Just me,” Steve corrected her. “Probably should have done this before we suited up though. How about we get you out of here and we can worry about it on the plane.”

“No offense, but anything happens to either one of you, we’ve lost an avenue of possible defense against this thing,” she retorted, worrying her lip. She was about to say more when Bucky held his hand up for silence.

“No offense, but if anything happens to us, chances are you won’t have survived either.”

“Bucky-”

“No, it’s okay,” Ella laughed nervously, her eyes averting to the kit in her hand. “He’s probably right. I’m a chemical analyst who shouldn’t even be in the middle of this but Nick wanted me to stay on it. He told me a lot about you both. If you two can’t get me out of here and safely to Stark Industries, no one can.”

Bucky was already pulling off his shoulder harness and jacket. Steve didn’t know what made his eyes bug more, that or Ella Aubrey’s disclosure that she’d be going to Tony’s company rather than the CDC. It must have been written all over his face because Bucky glanced up at him then gave a surly shake of his head.

“Fury can’t protect her at the CDC. HYDRA will already have people in place there. They’ll expect her to go there once this breaks open.” He  ignored the other obvious reason for the shock on Steve’s face as he sat down at the small table in the room. He did frown deeply when Ella crouched down in front of him, clearly making herself as small and non-threatening as possible.

“Nick said you have severe PTSD and a problem with needles. Tell me what to do to make this easier on you?”

It was Bucky’s turn to look shocked, but then his expression turned practically murderous. Ella actually scooted back from him as he fixed her with blazing eyes. 

“Well I feel so warm and fuzzy knowing that  Nick fucking Fury thinks it’s okay to broadcast my personal shit to the world again.”

Steve rubbed at his face as Ella shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry. The situation doesn’t give me time to tip toe around you-”

“I don’t need tip-toeing around,” Bucky growled at her. “Just get it over with.”

“Buck, just let me give the sample-”

Slamming his hand down on table stopped Steve’s words immediately. “Goddamnit, Steve, I don’t need you coddling me! Let her take the fucking sample so we can get the hell outta here!”

Steve held his hands up in surrender as Bucky fixed his eyes upon the lights of the city beyond the window. He’d already rolled up his thermal sleeve and his jaw was tightly clenched as he made a fist to prep his veins. As Ella cautiously swabbed the inside of Bucky’s elbow, Steve saw the tension building in every muscle of Bucky’s body. A slight tremor rippled through his hand and a muscle spasmed in his cheek.

“Buck…”

Bucky’s head didn’t move, but his eyes snapped to Steve’s and stayed glued to him as he also crouched down on Bucky’s other side.

“Right here,” Steve murmured gently, pointing to his eyes. Bucky’s lips thinned but he did as Steve asked, keeping their eyes locked. When Ella pierced his vein, Bucky’s breath hitched then sped up, his chest nearly heaving. His prosthetic arm jerked and the metal plates calibrated wildly. Steve wanted to grip his hand but he thought it might feel more restrained than comforting. Instead he rested one hand lightly to Bucky’s left forearm and his thigh. The former sergeant looked ready to climb out of his own skin.

The moment held with Ella saying nothing save a soft ‘okay’ when she swapped out the collection tube. Once the second one was full, she carefully pulled the needle free. Before she could place a cotton pad to the puncture wound, Bucky jolted upright and stormed out the door, grabbing his jacket and harness as he went.

“I’m sorry,” Ella offered but Steve shook her off.

“Just let it go. He’ll be okay,” he muttered as he pulled off his own armor and offered up his arm.

*****************************************************

Bucky prowled the hall, pointedly ignoring the two bodies still laying on the floor. He’d certainly seen much worse and his frame of mind didn’t have room to dwell upon two men he could no longer do anything to help. He was livid over Fury airing his laundry to strangers, and he was furious with himself for getting worked up over one woman coming at him with a needle. He hadn’t struck out at her or launched her across the room, but it seemed too small a victory right now, especially in the face of the shitstorm they now found themselves in. He didn’t kid himself either; Steve getting in his face probably diverted some small disaster.

He stopped pacing and stood next to the window, trying to find some inner stillness to latch onto. The Hollywood sign was now illuminated and he pressed his forehead to the cool glass as he stared at it. In another life, one of his friends at the dock told him he should move here to pursue his piano playing. He’d entertained the idea for a split second before casting the notion aside. He and Steve had carved a modest life out for themselves in Brooklyn. They were okay and Bucky had no grand dreams. He was content to be where he was with Steve.

His thoughts slowed to a halt as an odd hissing noise filled the hallway. It sounded like air escaping a vent… or a body, a noise that was distinct and hard to forget. Bucky pulled his face back from the window and shifted his focus to the reflection of the hallway.

Behind him, one of the men sat up.

Bucky slowly turned around and stared with wide eyes as the man haltingly pushed himself to his feet. He stood motionless until Bucky’s arm plates shifted. The clink of metal on metal was soft, but seemed like gunshot in the still hallway. He stood frozen as the man’s head jerked around to pinpoint the sound.

Not a man anymore. His milky, green-tinged eyes indicated he’d become something else and Bucky couldn’t even bring himself to think the word, much less say it. It zeroed in on him and another long hiss escaped as its shoulders hunched. It stayed still, just hissing at him, and Bucky wasn’t sure why. Suddenly it ran at him and he planted his feet and slammed his metal fist into its face. Bone crunched beneath the enhanced force of his blow and it fell to the floor again, twitching violently.

Down the hall, the other body started to spasm.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

******************************************************

Ella had just finished drawing Steve’s blood when Bucky flew back into the room. “We’re going. Right now.”

Paling at the blood on Bucky’s prosthetic hand, Ella ran into the bathroom. “Can you rinse that off,” she asked sharply, her voice panicked.

“Yeah-”

“Do it,” she commanded, throwing a towel at him.

“You weren’t even out there that long. What happened,” Steve queried, quickly pulling his harness back into place. He clipped his shield to his back and pulled a jacket from his duffel. Handing it to Ella, he zipped the duffel back up and shouldered it.

“Put that on. It’s a kevlar mix in case we run into any HYDRA agents.” He looked back at Bucky, expecting an answer to his question. Instead Bucky leveled a dark look at the chemical analyst.

“When you said turnaround earlier, you didn’t mean the time between when they got sick and the time they died, did you?”

“No,” Ella blinked back at him. “I thought you realized what I meant. Turnaround is the time between when they die and when they wake up.”

Two sets of blue eyes bugged at her.

“Wake up, wait,  what ?” Steve turned to look between Bucky and Ella. “What do you mean wake up? Like… zombies?” Bucky flinched at the word but his eyes stayed on Ella. “Buck, talk to me.”

“The two bodies in the hall,” Bucky answered slowly, “they stood up and charged me. You… what made you hide in there?” he asked as he pointed to the closet. “Did you see them die and knew they’d be coming back? There's scratches on the door. Were there others besides the two in the hall?”

“They get aggressive when the sickness hits them. They were trying to come at me, but as they get more aggressive they also seem to become more easily confused. They don’t do doors well. I kept my feet braced against it until they wandered back out into the hall. I didn’t want to leave here and risk you not being able to find me. I dropped my cell somewhere and I wasn’t about to come out of there to look for it.”

“We’re not gonna look for it now either. We’re getting outta here. Secure those samples.”

Ella heeded Bucky’s directive and pushed the vials into the cushioned metal case. She tucked it into the small backpack she had and pulled its straps over her shoulders. She zipped up the jacket Steve gave her and buckled the stabilizing strap of her backpack across her abdomen.

“These things are sharp in the hearing department, Stevie.”

“Copy that,” Steve muttered. “Guess Fury was right to want stealth after all.”

“Yeah we’re gonna have a serious talk with Fury when we get back.”

For his part, Bucky holstered his handgun and pulled a snub rifle with suppressor from his duffel. He quickly assembled it and then various cartridges were tucked into his belt packs and uniform pockets. He ditched the mask back into the duffel bag, obviously not seeing much point in it, but put the goggles into another pouch and nodded toward Steve to do the same. He took Bucky’s cue and also loaded himself down with rounds for his gun. He pulled it and screwed on the silencer.

Zombies. Steve didn’t even know how to process that. He hadn’t felt this out of step with the world around him since the day he hurled an assassin across hard asphalt only to find out it was his presumed-dead best friend. He tried to size up Ella Aubrey as he and Bucky finished arming themselves to the teeth. The glassy expression was gone but the subtle shaking in her hands wasn’t. It had to be enough that she was fully mentally present and ready to do what was necessary.

Bucky was already on the same page as Steve. He turned on Ella and leaned down to put his face level with hers. “Pay attention to everything. Your focus stays on us. You don't wander off either. One of us tells you to do something, do  not question it; just do it… You can ask why later. We clear?”

“Yeah,” she stuttered. “Of course.”

“Have you ever fired a gun before?”

Ella winced at that. “Yeah… but I was a kid. Target practice out in a field.”

Pulling out a smaller handgun and holster, Bucky held out the latter to her then quickly loaded the gun. She startled when he chambered the first round. He clicked off the safety and handed it to her.

“You pull the trigger extra hard the first shot then it’s ready to go. It’ll only take a tap to fire again so this stays in the holster unless shit gets dire. It’s not the ideal size for your hand but it’s the least amount of kick of what I brought with me. You pull it, you remember target practice and you make the shot count. Just make sure you hit them and not us. We might heal fast but I’ll be pissed as hell if I hear one of yours go by my head. Got it?”

“Got it,” she answered weakly.

“Stay between us.

”Okay.” She looked about ready to throw up. Steve squeezed the top of her arm gently.

“How bad do you think it is here in the building?” he asked. “We saw two accidents, one on the side street and another on the freeway. The freeway guy was convulsing pretty bad-”

“They do that at the end,” Ella shuddered as she tried to feed the gun’s barrel into her holster. Her hand was shaking though and Steve had to help. “They start convulsing and they throw up. Anyone that gets hit with it tend to get sick quickly. The two in the hall took about forty-five minutes to turn… I don’t know… I just… I guess it depends on how many people were confined in their rooms or offices over the last two hours.”

“Could it be the whole building,” Steve asked. Not that it really mattered what she said. They’d treat it as worst case scenario.

“I… I just don’t know. It could be the whole city by now, Steve. It’s moved so quickly and I don’t have enough information to predict anything accurately. I’m just guessing!” She was shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she stressed out. It obviously put Bucky on edge because he held up his hand to get her attention.

“It doesn’t matter right this minute,” he stated frankly, more aware of his volume after his encounter in the hallway. “We go out there with the assumption anyone could be infected. No wounding shots, Steve. I stabbed the one in the heart and it didn’t even slow him down so head shots only. Us or them mentality because right now there’s no cure.”

“Yeah, got it, Buck,” Steve acknowledged. “Let’s get outta here.”


	2. "I want my cocktail, Steve."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella's pretty sure they're both certifiable.  
> Neither would necessarily argue the point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I thought two chapters would do it but Bucky and Steve just can't stop being... themselves. The snark and slight insanity is strong in these two.
> 
> EDITED: Fixed some errors and added something I left out that plays into the next chapter.

When they entered the hallway again, something caught the peripheral of Bucky’s vision and his head pivoted toward the floor-to-ceiling window. Steve followed him to the window and they both sagged a little where they stood.

“Ah shit,” Bucky breathed. “Not good.”

“Definitely not good,” Steve agreed. Behind them, Ella gasped as she took in the scene. Beyond the window, the valley below them was dotted with fires and the flashing lights of first responder vehicles. The building had insulated them from hearing the chaos but now they knew just how fast things were falling apart. They were about to turn away when part of the valley fell into darkness.

“Steve-”

“Yeah.”

They both reached for their goggles and secured them loosely around their necks. Even with enhanced vision, the goggles gave them an edge, and if the power failed it would just take a quick yank upward to fit them into place. He didn’t know how well the… zombies could see but no sense in risking it. Steve looked apologetically at Ella. “If the power goes here, there’ll be emergency power so you’ll be able to see. The light’ll be low though and Buck and I need to see everything like daylight.”

“Whatever works,” she frowned. “I trust you.”

“Good answer,” came Bucky’s wry grunt of approval. They walked briskly toward the elevator and he held his rifle half-raised as if expecting the undead to jump out from any of the door alcoves. It certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility though they hardly needed guns to deal with one or two. It was a group that worried him. They could protect themselves and take their share of knocks, but Ella was another matter.

“Should we risk the elevator, Buck?”

“The faster we get further down, the better. Worth the risk to me.”

“Wait… how do we get out if the power fails,” Ella asked worriedly.

Half turning with a wicked smirk plied to his lips, Bucky wiggled his metal fingers at her then pointed at Steve.

“Metal… meathead.”

“Hey!” It should have offended Steve but if Bucky was able to actually crack a joke right now, that was a good thing. He’d take it without much blowback. “You were the jock in school, not me.”

“Do I look like a jock now, Stevie,” he murmured back calmly, the smirk still in place. “Can’t really see myself on a sports team now…”

“Rugby teams would kill for that arm-”

“Sharp hearing,” Ella whispered nervously. “Should we still be talking?”

Bucky paused to level a sardonic look back at her. “If we’re talking, appreciate it for the good sign that it is. If we shut up, then you can worry.”

He glanced at Steve and rolled his eyes before continuing toward the elevator. This was where Steve sometimes had trouble reconciling new Bucky with his old Bucky. Before he became a soldier, Bucky was charming and chivalrous almost to a fault. He was always protective of the girls he took out and no one could ever tell that a girl had bothered him until they arrived back home for the night. Then he’d vent his annoyance until Steve handed him a soda from their dilapidated Philco ice box. The thing was ancient but it stayed cold. They hadn’t been able to afford one themselves but their landlord took pity upon them and let them use it. They could barely afford the electricity to run it but in the summer it was a godsend.

But that was their youth. When Steve rescued Bucky from Zola, it seemed like Bucky recovered from it fairly well while they were in soldier mode and dispatching HYDRA scum. It was off the field that the cracks showed through. Even with his new physique, Steve didn’t doubt for a second that Bucky could have wooed Peggy eventually. Not that Steve believed he would have; Bucky would never move in on the first woman to actually pay Steve any mind once he realized the score. When he put his mind to it though, really put the effort in, Bucky could charm anyone into thinking the Golden Gate was really golden. He just had that easy, lazy, mischievous grin that disarmed even the truly cynical. Which is why Steve had been shocked when Bucky snapped at one of the nurses over a lighthearted comment she made in front of him. She’d joked that Steve really was more than a pretty face after he helped her carry in supplies despite being fresh back from a mission and bone-weary tired. Bucky had taken her head off, verbally reducing her to tears before storming off. They never talked about it, though Bucky did apologize to the nurse in question. He never so much as flirted with any women they met after that. Mostly he just avoided them. Steve never got the chance to try to coax Bucky back out of that shell before Zola’s train.

Now Bucky seemed more even keel around women but still not interested. He was more sarcastic than flirtatious, and if a woman annoyed him, he had no problem letting her know it. Steve wished it was as simple as the genteel boy dying when the hardened soldier was born but again, it all pointed back to Zola and HYDRA. It was one of a long list of reasons a fire burned in Steve’s belly to wipe every last one of them from the face of the planet.

They just had to wipe out a plague of zombies first.

*********************************************************

The only indicator of Bucky feeling the strain of the situation was the dent he put in the elevator button when he jabbed it. He pointedly ignored Steve’s look of concern but it wasn’t going to get better anytime soon. They were five floors down when the power went. He sighed as he pulled his googles over his eyes and switched them to night vision. Behind him, Steve did the same. Ella was gripping the side rail and clearly pep-talking herself into staying calm. He at least appreciated the effort, but he really wished he only had Steve and himself to worry about. This was going to be difficult enough as it was. It was one thing to protect her from fairly predictable HYDRA agents during a straight-forward trip from an office building to the airport, but this was royally fucked up. Feral, undead plague-carriers couldn’t be reasoned with, manipulated, bribed or worse, anticipated. There was no rhyme or reason to them, and where he and Steve could withstand bullets and serious injury, one lucky bite or plume of spittle could be the end of it. There was no guarantee their bodies could fight off the sickness.

Bucky would be hard-pressed not to kill Fury outright if they got out of this.

“When we get out of this,” Steve corrected him as he helped Bucky pry open the elevator doors, “you are not killing Fury. Maybe… smack him around a bit but…”

He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. Giving an unconcerned shrug, Bucky dug his metal fingers into the partially-exposed doors to Floor 47 and pulled.

Then immediately jerked back.

In the hallway on Ella’s floor, Bucky smelled a faint odor emanating from the two bodies. Or at least it would have been faint to someone normal but to him, and undoubtedly to Steve as well, the smell had been disgusting and grotesquely unique. They’d smelled their share of decaying bodies during the war but this was…worse. Thankfully it hadn’t been that strong.

Floor 47 was a different story. Bucky threw his hand up to cover his mouth and nose, trying to keep his body’s reaction down to only gagging. Steve was groaning and doubled over behind him. Ella had her face buried in the crook of her elbow but wasn’t as badly affected.

The smell, though revolting, wasn’t what really concerned Bucky. It was the twenty-some pairs of legs shuffling with growing agitation in front of the door. The ominous hissing filled the air and pair of bruised hands appeared… then another set… and another. All were blindly flailing and grabbing at the air near Bucky’s face.

“Bucky…!”

Ella’s startled voice hit him as a head with a half-eaten face managed to clear the gap. Its body followed and it fell through the opening in the doors. It landed flat on its stomach but wasted no time in grabbing for the first thing in its line of site, which was Ella’s ankle. She kicked out, trying to dislodge it, but it had an iron grip on her. It was only for a moment though. Steve brought his boot down onto it’s arm then kicked it in the skull. He drew his Sig and shot it in the head and it fell motionless. Bucky was already fighting off the others to make sure no more fell through, but they were starting to become frenzied after hearing the commotion.

“Steve… little help here…?”

Steve was immediately by his side and trying to push the doors back together while Bucky shoved them back with his left hand. They finally got the doors closed and sat down hard against the side of the elevator. Steve lifted his goggles so Ella could see his eyes.

“You okay?” She nodded but didn’t say anything. The glassiness was creeping into her eyes again so he searched for something to re-engage her mind. “These things going to get less coordinated or slower as they decay?”

Her eyes glued to the body on the floor, Ella slowly shook her head. “Not from what I’ve seen so far. This is status quo until they lose a body part that impairs them. They’ll keep moving until there’s either nothing left to move or their head is destroyed.”

“We were planning on head shots anyway,” Steve grimaced. “I guess that’s pretty much all we can do.”

“No there’s other things,” Bucky corrected him. When Steve and Ella looked over at him, he broke into a gleeful grin. “ _Boom_.”

“We can’t bomb the US Bank Tower, Buck.”

“Oh of course not…” he snorted back at Steve derisively, “because it’s so useful right now crawling with contagious zombies. Look, I’m not talking about a destructive bomb… more like a flash bomb; a few steps up from what police use. Blind ’em then take a shitload of ’em down before they stop seeing spots.”

“Except won’t we be blinded too?”

Bucky could tell Steve already knew the answer to that as he tapped his goggles for Ella’s benefit.

“Me and Steve won’t be. You’ll just need to close your eyes if we have to do that. They’re hot and they stink, but the flash is what it’s all about. You can stand right behind us. When we wade in, you hang back and pick off any stragglers that come at you.”

She nodded at Bucky then rose to her knees and began unbuckling her pack. Bucky’s expression darkened. “What are you doing?”

“I should get samples-”

“No.” He caught Steve’s head whipping around to stare at him questioningly as he regained his feet. He studied the ceiling of the elevator until he found the release latch he was looking for. “We don’t have time for that. We’re gonna climb up to the next level and see how it looks. If it’s clear we go out that way and take the stairs down. If not, we go up another level.”

“This is important though,” Ella argued, trying to reason with him. He cut her off sharply though as he bashed the latch with his rifle and stepped clear as the ruined handle clattered to the floor.

“Yeah, I guess it is but we’re not stopping for you to do that. When we’re back in New York you can have Stark go out in his tin can outfit and grab you some fresh ones. Steve and I have our hands full just getting all three of us out of here in one piece so forget it. Not gonna happen.”

Ella turned her gaze to Steve. “Nick made it sound like you were in charge of this. It would be irresponsible of me not to try to get samples.”

Much to Bucky’s relief Steve just held up his hands and shook his head. “It would be irresponsible to allow you to risk that here when we could do it more safely in New York… and I’m just a baby officer, ma’am,” he smiled with self-effacing sarcasm. “I’m deferring to Buck on this mission. He’s got way more experience than I do for this type of scenario.”

“Now that that’s settled,” Bucky grunted, “Steve…?”

“Yeah.” Steve pulled himself upright then cupped his hands. Bucky shouldered his rifle and stepped into Steve’s grip, who then hefted him through the escape door in the ceiling. Bucky twisted his body in an almost feline manner and landed with stealthy grace. He turned and steadied himself on the roof of the elevator then extended his metal arm to Steve. A solid yank upward and they were both crouching in the elevator shaft.

“Stay there while we take a look. It’ll just take a minute,” Steve told Ella while trying to keep his voice reassuring. Bucky had to hand it to Steve; mostly he had far more patience than Bucky did these days, though that wasn’t saying much. Still, Steve seemed to like Ella well enough so he was trying to keep her alert but calm.

As they climbed up, Bucky switched his comm back on and lowered his voice so as not to be overheard. “You like her.”

“No,” came the instant response, but then a soft huff of breath. “I mean, yeah, I do but… not the way you’re implying.”

Why he felt relief over that was a mystery to him. “Who said I was implying anything? Just making an observation, Stevie.”

“Bull,” Steve laughed. “I’ve known you forever, Buck. I know when you’re implying things. and I know when you’re gearing up to give me a load of shit over something.”

“What…? You don’t have to be ashamed of it! She’s a little helpless but at least she’s smart. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Bucky,” Steve groaned out a sigh into his mic, “the only reason she seems helpless is because we’re used to Natasha being just over five feet of steamroller. You got smacked in the face with a baseball bat. That’s not exactly helpless.”

“Fair enough, she does have some attitude I guess-”

“Buck-”

“What? You could do worse-”

“Drop it!”

Bucky actually flinched at that, the phrase bringing up a memory he did not want to revisit. Steve seemed to realize it and instantly softened his voice back to a whisper. “I’m just not interested, pal, okay? I kinda wish Natasha would stop with the matchmaking attempts too. I’m sure Ella’s nice enough and smart and a great catch but hooking up doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve got other things on my mind.”

“Such as,” Bucky asked as he waited for Steve to climb level with him on the opposite side of the door for Floor 48.

“God, Bucky, just let it go okay? Please. It’s just not something I want to do now.”

This was new. He’d thought Steve had refused Natasha’s attempts to set him up because none of the women she mentioned were Steve’s type. This sounded more like he just wasn’t up for dating regardless. Bucky could certainly relate to that, although his reasons were likely far different than Steve’s.

“Okay pal, calm down,” he murmured quietly to smooth Steve’s ruffled feathers. Sort of. “The zombies don’t need to see your patriotic pout.”

“Asshole.”

A soft, wheezing laugh crackled up from Bucky’s throat. “I can’t even argue with that, but you’re still here, aren’t ya Stevie?”

A long suffering sigh filled the space between them as Bucky braced himself in preparation for opening the sliding doors.

“Yeah, Buck, I am.” Steve also braced on the other side, ready to pull. Bucky saw him smile from the corner of his eye. “Not really any place else I’d rather be.”

Stilling his whole body abruptly, Bucky locked eyes with Steve. “Even with a building full of zombies?”

Steve held his stare despite his smile turning a little sheepish. “As dumb as it sounds, yeah, even with the zombies… although I am taking it pretty hard about missing the Getty.”

Why did Bucky’s stomach just do a little flip at that? Of course it felt great and comfortable and right to be back to an inseparable unit again, but this felt… different. A good different… but also a bit terrifying. Steve looked at him quizzically and Bucky had to shake himself from his reverie.

“You okay?”

“Yep. Just thinking we could always get Ella on a plane out then go clear out the Getty…”

“That almost sounds like fun, Buck, although we can’t use any flash bombs there. The flash would hurt the art,” Steve smiled, something flickering behind his eyes that Bucky wasn’t used to seeing. Yeah, that was doing something very new to Bucky’s gut… and his chest

“More than bullet holes or blood spatter?”

“Yeah, we’d have to get creative and avoid those too,” Steve grinned widely at him. “If not, then what’s the point of a museum with all the art ruined?”

Bucky shrugged amiably, his cheeky grin slipping easily back into place. “You can still charge admission. Just advertise it as modern art now.”

Steve was trying so hard not to laugh too loud that he actually squeaked. Bucky thought it was possibly one of the best things he’d ever heard, especially now that Steve was no longer that scrawny whip of a kid.

“Jesus, Stevie, can ya pipe down and be serious? We got a floor to check here.”

His best friend managed to do that until he glanced up at Bucky and saw the trademark smirk. “Fuck,” he wheezed, dissolving again.

“Now who’s expressing themselves freely,” Bucky teased, waiting for Steve to compose himself. He finally did and huffed out a steadying breath. He shook his head warningly at Bucky but his eyes were bright and good-natured in spite of the situation. This was what always got them through the worst missions of the war; their ability to take a step away from it even if only for a few precious minutes.

“Okay, can we do this now?”

“I'm waitin' on you, Captain Curator.”

“Shit that one’s gonna stick, isn’t it,” Steve bemoaned handing Bucky ammunition for teasing.

“It does have a ring to it,” Bucky admitted, completely pleased with himself.

“Fuck,” Steve repeated and Bucky giggled softly as they began to tug open the doors. Fuck SHIELD and everyone else; if anyone was going to corrupt Steven Grant Rogers, it was going to be him.

The floor was mostly clear. Six hissers were loping along aimlessly but that was all they could see. Bucky dropped the two that were much further down the hall, then a third that Steve caught in the mouth rather than the head.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he quickly shot the other three perfectly, but Bucky waved off his apology.

“S’alright, I got it.” They looked both directions to double check it was clear. “Okay, you wanna go back and get Ms. Aubrey?”

Steve studiously ignored the hint of condescension in Bucky’s tone. He watched as Steve dropped down to the roof of the elevator and stuck his head through the escape hatch. He lifted Ella from the car and then guided her up the climb to where Bucky was crouched in the doorway. Steve practically handed her up to Bucky, who pulled her onto the floor easily. Her jaw slacked suddenly, but Bucky didn’t even get the chance to turn. The sudden hissing behind him was cut beautifully short by Steve’s Sig. Bucky heard the thump of a body hitting the floor behind him, and the corner of his lip hitched into a lopsided grin.

“Thanks pal.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” Steve huffed as he hopped onto Floor 48. “I actually think I’m getting better at this.”

“You’re both certifiable,” Ella informed them as they grinned like idiots at one another. “I’m just going to hope the giggling is a good sign that we’re going to get out of here with minimal headaches?”

“Like he said, when we go quiet,” Steve chuckled beneath his breath, “then you can worry.”

“Just consider us your in-flight entertainment,” Bucky deadpanned.

“We’re not in-flight,” Ella scoffed quietly, finally seeming to relax into their repartee, “otherwise I want my complimentary cocktail.”

“The night’s young,” Steve laughed softly but Bucky’s head jerked around to stare at her incredulously.

“Clearly Fury’s booking her better flights than we’ve been getting. No one offered us complimentary cocktails.”

“Maybe because we’d have to drink the entire galley dry to even get hiccups, Buck.”

“So not the point, Steve.”

They found the stairwell and Bucky eased the door open. Steve put his hand to Ella’s shoulder to hold her still as he held the door so Bucky could raise his rifle to ready. He crept to the edge of the landing and peered over the railing. The instant tensing of his body as he stepped back from the ledge told Steve the coast was definitely not clear. Bucky faced him and gave hand signals.

Roughly thirty to forty on the next landing down. In the tight quarters of the stairwell, even with a flash bomb, it was a foolhardy attempt. He pushed Steve back into the hall and silently closed the door.

“Down’s not an option I’m liking.”

“Then we either go up really quietly or we go back and climb the shaft. That’s not really an option I’m liking with Ella to consider. We've got no safety gear for her.”

“I can’t climb the elevator shaft,” Ella cut in urgently with a soft hiss, causing them both to look at her. “I’m terrified of heights. I’ll have a freaking heart attack before we get three floors up.”

“Fabulous,” Bucky sighed, rubbing a hand over his mouth as he turned a circle to consider their options. Normally he'd memorize every nook and cranny of a building involved in a mission but there hadn't been enough time. Instead he'd handed over the blueprints for Steve to study while he prepped the jet. "What levels are the setbacks?"

"Uh... We're on one. Next ones up are floors fifty-six, sixty-one, and sixty-nine. None below this one."

"Well that's the most convenient thing that's happened so far." Bucky chewed at the inside of his cheek as he thought. "We could go up a level, open window and rappel down."

"No safety gear for Ella," Steve reminded him. "Forty-eight stories in twenty mile-per-hour gusts and a civilian to hang on to isn't giving me any warm fuzzies, Buck."

"Me either," Ella blanched, "unless you want me throwing up on you."

Bucky swore in irritated frustration. He wanted to get them out of the confines of this building. Trying to silently climb twenty-five floors to the roof in tight quarters was his least-favorite option.

“Stairs it is then. We make for the roof and call in a chopper request. Make sure you don’t have anything unsecured. Noise could get us killed.” He watched as they tightened straps and tucked in anything loose that could jingle or rustle. “We go slow and silent. No talking. Stevie turn your comm off audio. Tap setting only. We can’t risk it squelching.”

“Done,” Steve confirmed.

Bucky reached to the small of his back and nudged out two small spheres. He handed them to Ella. “Keep these out. Click the button twice fast to arm them, and then you throw ’em like bad party favors, you got it?”

“Yeah. Twice. Throw it at the horde. Got it,” Ella nodded, very obviously unnerved by what she held. She looked pretty relieved to not be back in the elevator shaft though, and a more determined expression was taking over her face.

“Horde?”

“That’s what we’re calling large groups of them,” she explained. Steve just looked at Bucky and his dry sarcasm spilled forth as Bucky reached for the door.

“Doesn’t that just sound delightfully ominous?”

“Yeah, I’m tingling in all the right places, Stevie.” He looked to his childhood friend with silent question in his eyes. Steve took a breath then nodded to him.

“Okay… here goes nothin’ I guess...”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: Steve referring to himself as a "baby officer" is a loving nod to the wonderful fic "Politics & Animals" by Kryptaria & Rayvanfox.
> 
> Go. Read it. Make it your friend.  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/1824967/chapters/3919405


	3. "Yeah, joke's on you asshole."

The stairwell took on a new level of creepy with no noise save the disjointed hissing and shuffling of feet on the landing below. The emergency lighting added to the suffocating sense of foreboding, and Steve hated how much it resembled the eerie mood of the bank vault where they’d kept Bucky after the bridge. When Bucky started to feel more in control of the memories that barraged him, Steve had followed him to the vault. Initially Bucky had wanted him to remain outside once he realized Steve was there, but eventually they'd laid waste to the contents of the vault. Bucky watched as Steve ripped the heinous chair and equipment apart, and then he'd destroyed the cryo unit while Bucky vented his rage on the rest. He couldn't get out of there fast enough so he knew damn well Bucky was fighting off twinges of claustrophobia. He’d suffered from it to a degree after the first time Zola experimented upon him.

Bucky took the lead with Ella between them. The next flight of steps, Bucky caught Steve’s attention as he pivoted to step up from the landing. His forehead creased deeply and then he gave a subtle shake of his head. His silent message came through plain enough to Steve.

_Stop overthinking everything, punk. I’m fine._

Steve gave a nod in response but he would never apologize for worrying about Bucky, even if he could speak freely right now. Feeling properly chastised though, Steve turned his attention to Ella. She walked between them and kept her fingertips lightly rested upon Bucky’s back so she could watch her feet as they climbed. In the low light, the shadow that Bucky cast over her was enough to make her wary of accidentally scuffing a shoe on the edge of a stair. They were only two floors up and the tension of it was already getting on Steve’s nerves, Bucky’s likely even worse. Eighteen more floors might actually land them in a psyche ward after this. It would be so much easier if they could communicate.

As if to agree, Steve’s phone pinged in his uniform pocket. The noise was barely anything but in the dead silence of the stairwell, it seemed to echo right through his brain. It was also enough to startle a truncated gasp from Ella. Bucky immediately froze and his head swiveled sharply around. Steve didn’t have to see his eyes to know they were ready to burn holes through his goggles. Steve wasted no time in silencing his phone with Bucky still staring at him.

They waited.

The noise below them was nearly down to nothing before the ping, but now it started to gain a hint of volume. Bucky eased to the middle of the stairwell and peered over the railing. The small horde was on the move, beckoned by the GPS locator on Steve’s phone. It seemed horrifically apropos. Bucky reached into a pocket on his thigh and pulled out a small, chip-like device. He pressed it five times rapidly, then held his hand over the rail. When he let the device go, it fell smoothly down between the staircase railings for five seconds. It then jerked suddenly and attached itself to the nearest metal object, which was a large bolt on the side of the railing. A steady chirping sound began and what Bucky could see of the horde slowly began to shift in their tracks to move back down the stairs. The chirping wasn’t loud enough for Ella to hear from their position so she looked between the two men in confusion. Steve pulled up his texting screen and typed quickly.

DROPPED A SONAR BEACON. HORDE HEARS IT.

Ella read the text and nodded, but she also looked concerned as she reached for his phone. Typing quickly, she handed it back with worried eyes.

WHAT IF THERE ARE MORE ABOVE US??

Steve took the phone back from her and winced before showing it to Bucky. His head tilted upward as he leaned over the railing to try and see. He cocked his ear slightly, as did Steve. Bucky jerked his shoulders and shook his head so Steve typed again.

DON’T HEAR ANYTHING BUT WILL STAY ALERT. NO OTHER CHOICE.

Ella rubbed at her face and squeezed her eyes shut. She breathed in and out a few times then nodded. Steve patted her shoulder and when he looked up, Bucky’s lips were compressed into a thin scowl. He turned to start back up the steps when Ella’s hand curled into the back of his belt. He froze again and looked back. She wasn’t looking at him though, so he turned his face to Steve questioningly. Steve held his hands up to plead for Bucky to have patience with the biochemist, and he saw Bucky take a deep breath of his own. He rolled his shoulder and took the next flight of steps slowly, still not making a sound.

The next eight flights of stairs felt like they took forever. Steve noticed Ella’s steps becoming sluggish so he leaned forward to give her shoulder a gentle shake. Bucky caught the movement and stopped his progress to look back. He dislodged her hand, turned fully, and leaned down, pulling his goggles up on his forehead so she could see his eyes.

“Are you good?” he whispered. Ella looked up and slowly nodded. “You have to stay alert.”

“I _am_ ,” she whispered through clenched teeth.

“Steve just had to nudge you.” 

"I’m sorry! I don’t go out and save the world every day,” she hissed. “I sit on my chair in a lab sixty hours a week and I take elevators! I also haven’t had more than three to four hours sleep per night for the past six days! Pardon me if I’m a little tired!”   
  
Bucky didn’t attempt to shush her, which Steve was grateful for. It would likely have made her voice raise without realizing it. His eyes flicked questioningly to Steve. Raising his own goggles, Steve gave a miniscule shake of his head. If she was groggy before, she wouldn’t be now that Bucky pissed her off. While the tension in his face eased slightly, Bucky was obviously too wired for any deep, sincere apologies.   
  
“Shouldn’t’ve hit that ball game then,” he grinned at her. Ella drew back, her body language now indignant on top of being pissed. She pulled herself to full height, puffing herself up for some sort of angry retort. Unfortunately, with Bucky two steps above her, it only brought her eye level with his stomach so when she flipped him off, it didn’t exactly have the impact she was probably hoping for. It did leave a mark with Bucky though. A flicker of what Steve recognized as amusement crossed Bucky’s face before he pulled his goggles back down. It wasn’t kumbaya by any means, but it was as close of a meeting of the minds as they were likely going to get in this situation.

 Three more stories upward, Ella slowed and held her hand out for Steve’s phone as a plaque announcing they’d reached the 60th floor loomed above them. They were back to radio silence so Steve tapped his comm to warn Bucky then pulled his cell free from his pocket. Ella typed quickly and handed it back. The single word had Steve cringing inwardly, already knowing what body language he was about to get in response. He held the phone out to Bucky, whose keen eyes read it easily despite the distance. 

BATHROOM   
  
Bucky’s torso sagged slightly, but he surprised Steve by nodding and gesturing toward the door. He held Ella back as Steve reached the landing and pulled his gun. He was itching to just give his shield a good, healthy hurl toward some zombie skulls, but the noise would be ungodly in the quiet hallways. Bucky seemed to sense his frustration and gave him a light punch in the arm. Barely a tap, but it was enough to pull Steve from his impending funk. Bucky raised his brows in question and Steve gave him a single nod.   
  
Sure enough, Bucky did actually have a compound in one of his uniform pockets that he sprayed the hinges of the door with to keep it from squeaking. Steve had to suppress a smile over it as Bucky eased the door open. They both sniffed the air. The odor was there, but nothing like 47. Both men edged into the hallway facing opposite directions with their backs nearly touching. Ella had the two spheres out that Bucky gave her, and her foot kept the door propped open for them.

Steve stayed planted by the door as Bucky silently moved down the hall to the first room. They were out of the hotel section of the tower and into the business offices, but they should theoretically still have bathrooms. Steve hadn’t gone into as much detail looking over the blueprints for the upper floors. He certainly hadn’t given much thought to memorizing bathroom locations.   
  
He heard a gentle click as Bucky placed a demagnetizing strip against the door’s lock. Not all Avenger toys were grossly complicated, especially the ones Steve and Bucky favored. Bucky was more a tech geek than Steve would ever be though. During the war, the only time Bucky and Howard ever peacefully coexisted was when Howard had new toys for Bucky to try out. Bucky was always nothing but smiles when he had a new way to annihilate HYDRA goons.   
  
Steve gestured for Ella to leave the stairwell and she eased the door shut. They moved quietly until Steve glimpsed  a hisser ambling from an alcove just beyond Bucky. He quickly jogged past Ella and fired at the creature. It fell immediately, and while Bucky didn't look up, the corner of his lip twitched upward in approval. He carefully opened the door when Steve had his gun at the ready.   
  
There were three hissing, agitated creatures inside, but this time both Steve and Bucky found themselves wishing Bucky had chosen an office in the opposite direction.

It wasn't three men across the expansive office. It was a man, a woman and a young boy who looked to be roughly fourteen. Steve raised his gun, but he couldn't fire at the boy as the three ambled forward. Bucky pushed him from the room before he could regain his wits about him, and shut the door firmly in his face. Steve reached up and tapped his comm in anger, and his shoulders drooped in frustration when he immediately got a loud, single tap back. Bucky’s way of telling him to calm down.

"What's going on," Ella asked him, her eyes clouded with worry over the way he was glaring at the door.

"I froze up and I shouldn't have," he growled past a clenched jaw. He wanted to thump on the door and demand Bucky open it, but he was mindful of the noise it would cause. He also could have taken the door right off the hinges if noise weren’t a factor, but then they’d also lose a line of defense while they had Ella inside. 

"There's a family in there... I couldn't shoot the boy."

"How old," Ella frowned, but then held up her hand. "You know what, it's probably better I don't know."

"You're probably right," Steve muttered then went back to staring at the door. He knew the family was dead seconds after the door was shut in his face so he figured Bucky was either clearing the rest of the office or removing the bodies from view. It pissed him off because he should be helping while Ella did whatever she needed to do.

“I’m sure you would have snapped out of it just fine, Steve. He’s just really protective of you.”

“He doesn’t need to be,” Steve frowned, crossing his arms.   
  
“You don’t need to be either,” Ella smiled up at him, “but you are anyway. I don’t imagine you’ll be stopping anytime soon… do you?”   
  
Steve wearily rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s not the same.”   
  
“Isn’t it?”   
  
“No. Not even close.” Steve leaned his back to the wall and looked at Ella. He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them to look toward the window at the end of the hall. “He’s been through so much. Way more than what’s in that file Fury gave you. And that’s the homogenized version. There were files I found when my buddy and I raided a HYDRA base looking for Bucky. I didn’t turn any of them over to Nick. I burned all of them. If he remembers any of it, it’s his to tell, not me. Not SHIELD. Point is though… What he’s doing in there? He shouldn’t have to do it anymore. I should have pushed him out the door and dealt with it, not the other way around.”   
  
“I don’t know him at all, Steve, but I know he doesn’t want you to treat him like some damaged damsel. That much is obvious but your protectiveness of him won’t let you really see it.”   
  
“I see it,” Steve muttered stubbornly. “But this part should be over for him. He needs to stop feeling like he’s got all these things to atone for. He doesn’t. What was done to him was horrific and not his fault.”   
  
“It’s not yours either,” Ella informed him quietly. “He seems to have no trouble speaking his mind. If he didn’t want to do this anymore, don’t you think he’d tell you?”   
  
“I’m not sure he would.” Steve noticed movement down the hallway. They fell into silence as the hisser stumbled fairly fast toward them. It was still near the end of the hallway when Steve placed a perfect shot and it dropped with a heavy thud. One more came into view and he dropped that one as well.   
  
“He has this gift for being able to just shut down when he’s in the thick of it,” he continued on as though nothing had just happened. “That’s all fine and good until you hear the kind of nightmares he has once the rest of him comes back online. He can’t compartmentalize in his sleep... but Ella, he shouldn’t have to.”

“Maybe both of you should figure out who you are apart from being soldiers who constantly save the world," Ella mused. 

Steve raised his eyes somberly. “Wouldn’t even know where to begin.”   
  
“Bull,” she smiled. “You had lives before you became soldiers. What’d you get up to back then?”   
  
“He was an artist and a shit-starter,” Bucky answered her, having opened the door without Steve noticing. His goggles were above his eyes as he rounded on Steve and fixed him with a stare while he held the door open for Ella. “Back and to the right is the bathroom.”   
  
Ella slipped awkwardly past him, and once she was out of hearing range, Bucky smiled up at Steve. The smile didn't reach his eyes and was anything but warm.  
  
“At least turn your fucking mic off if you’re gonna discuss my life with other people.” His tone was coolly polite, which made Steve want to cringe even more than if he’d yelled.   
  
“Buck-” His soft plea was ignored as Bucky walked back inside the room. Steve had to turn sharply to catch it before it closed in his face. He caught up with Bucky and spun him around.   
  
“You shouldn’t have pushed me into the hall, okay?”   
  
“No, not okay,” Bucky growled, his voice low and angry as he shrugged off Steve’s grip. “You’ve never shot a kid before, Steve, and even though that wasn’t a kid anymore, your noble fucking brain would’ve still latched onto him that way. Like you said, I already have nightmares. One of us doing that is enough so I dealt with it. One more on the heap doesn’t make any difference.”   
  
“Yes it does,” Steve argued.   
  
“No it doesn’t,” Bucky grunted back at him as he looked away.   
  
“Of course it does,” Steve repeated, “and do you really think I don’t have nightmares too?”   
  
Bucky frowned darkly, returning his gaze to Steve. “You haven’t done anything to have nightmares over.”   
  
“I couldn’t get to you fast enough."   
  
“You couldn’t help what happened, Steve.”   
  
Steve smiled grimly at him. “Neither could you, but that’s cold comfort when you’re asleep and can’t tell yourself that.”   
  
Bucky’s eyes softened with surprise. He looked about to say something else when his eyes shifted to the side, hearing movement behind him. Steve’s eyes also shifted and he saw Ella’s approach.   
  
“I’m good,” she mumbled, uneasy at having to interrupt their argument. Bucky didn’t turn to look at her; instead he pushed past Steve to head for the door. Steve’s shoulders slumped in dejectedly as he wondered why all this was coming to a head now. Not that there was ever a good time to have drama with your best friend, but now was possibly the worst time imaginable.   
  
Ella gave his arm a gentle squeeze as she passed, taking up her position between them. Bucky had already moved into the hall and had his goggles back over his eyes. Steve gave him a quietly pleading look but it was impossible to tell if it had any effect. He sighed and pulled his own goggles down when Bucky turned to go for the stairwell door.

They were only back in the stairwell a few minutes when something clattered loudly on one of the landings above them. Steve automatically stopped as Bucky’s fist came up to signal him. Again, Bucky peered past the metal railing. He was still for a moment then shook his head silently. His subtle hand signal told Steve he couldn’t see anything but wasn’t confident about moving again.

Ella turned and held out her hand for Steve’s phone, wanting to know what was happening. He pulled it from his pocket and started to type. When he looked up to give her the cell to read, Ella's eyes widened abruptly, and Steve knew instantly he had a problem behind him. He shoved Ella backward as he spun to deal with the walking corpse, knowing Bucky would catch her. He must have pushed her a little harder than he meant to because he vaguely registered Bucky's grunt and a short scuffle behind him. The hissing creature moved faster than he expected, compared with what he’s just seen on the previous floor, and what Bucky told him of the two on Ella’s floor. It managed to get a firm grip upon his arm, and he was pulling his gun with his other hand when the thing tried to bite into his bicep. He heard Bucky yell, and then he was thrown sideways. Steve looked up just to see the creature bite Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky began to laugh almost hysterically, making Steve wonder if being thrown caused him to hit his head and start hallucinating.

"Yeah, joke's on you asshole," Bucky grinned before he slammed his blade into the creature's forehead. He gave it a swift kick to dislodge it from his knife. The blade made a sickening, grating sound as it pulled free, and Bucky leaned down to wipe it upon the dead man's pantleg. He still had giggles bubbling past his lips as he turned back to grin at Steve and Ella.

Steve pushed away from the wall and stalked up to Bucky to hit him in the chest with the heels of his hands. The blow was enough to force Bucky to sit down hard on the steps behind him. He blinked up as Steve loomed over him, completely furious.

"What the hell was that?!"

"What was what? I just killed it!"

"It bit you!"

"Metal arm, Steve," Bucky grinned, rapping his shoulder with his knuckles. “Better me than you.”

"You _laughed_ about it, Bucky!"

 "Well yeah... It was _funny_." 

Surely Bucky wasn’t surprised by Steve’s anger, though that did seem to indeed be the case. He shouldn’t want to laugh right now but he was literally shaking with the urge to let loose another stream of giggles. Steve’s anger backed off immediately as he realized Bucky had been deeply shaken by what had just happened. Always his protector, Bucky was only ever rattled when Steve took a particularly bad beating or worse ailment. He’d become almost manic with worry until Steve was out of danger, and Steve saw the high-pitched, giggling laughter as another version of that. Steve had nearly been bitten and Bucky’s behaviour now was his mind and heart’s way of trying desperately to sidestep the horror of it. Steve sighed and pulled Bucky’s goggles up so he could see his eyes and, sure enough, they were a bit wild.   
  
“Buck…” He crouched down so they were eye level with one another. This needed to be said on even terms. “I was already drawing my gun. The one you gave me for this exact type of scenario, remember?”   
  
“Steve, I don’t think like that when it goes down. You might not have pulled it in time.”   
  
“Or I might have shot you instead, you pulling that,” Steve reasoned. Much to his annoyance, Bucky flashed his trademark smirk.   
  
“You’ve never been that fast with a gun, Stevie. Your shield, yes, but it’s tight quarters in here. My way worked.”   
  
“What if it missed your arm though? What if it got your neck instead?”   
  
Bucky lifted his chin. “Then we’d find out if Fury’s theories about the serum in us are right.”   
  
“Damn it, Bucky,” Steve growled, giving him a shake, “you’ve been lecturing us about being safe and what you just did was reckless!”   
  
“That wasn’t reckless,” Bucky insisted. “That was instinct. Don’t ever ask me to stop protecting you, punk, because it will _never_ happen.”   
  
“I already watched you die once trying to protect me. I don’t want to do it again. I can’t.”

The two stared at each other, neither taking up the next word until Ella quietly cleared her throat. They both looked at her and Bucky winced a little at the bruise darkening on her cheek and temple. Steve moved her hair aside to get a better look. 

“You okay?”   
  
“Fine,” she answered softly. “I’d rather get acquainted with a wall than one of those things. Starting to feel a little claustrophobic. Can we get out of here?”   
  
Steve nodded and turned to offer Bucky his hand, not that Bucky needed it.   
  
“Thanks, Buck… Now knock it off.”   
  
“Jesus you really are a punk,” Bucky muttered, but took Steve’s hand and allowed himself to be hauled upright.   
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Steve huffed right back at him. “Fucking jerk.”   
  
“Y’know there’s plenty of rooms with big beds in this building,” Ella informed them with sarcasm oozing from her voice. They both stopped to turn wide-eyed stares upon her but she didn’t seem to care one bit. “What? Just putting the information out there into the universe.”   
  
Steve carefully avoided Bucky’s eyes as they pulled their goggles back on. If they both looked a bit crimson in the cheeks, Steve could always blame it upon the tinted emergency lights flickering above them. 

**************************************************

  
They were now at the 65th floor and Bucky’s mind was in a whirlwind. Ella’s comment had seemed an off-handed jab and he was likely giving it more attention than it deserved, but he couldn’t help it. His brain was filling in nooks and crannies that had him wondering just how much she’d really been joking, if at all.

  
_"I’ve got other things on my mind.”_  
  
_“Such as?”_  
  
_“God, Bucky, just let it go okay? Please. It’s just not something I want to do now.”_

 

_“Asshole.”_  
  
_“...but you’re still here, aren’t ya Stevie?”_  
  
_“Yeah, Buck, I am...Not really any place else I’d rather be.”_  
  
_“Even with a building full of zombies?”_  
  
_“As dumb as it sounds, yeah, even with the zombies…”_

  
The two snippets of conversation between them in the elevator shaft had given Bucky pause at the time, but then he’d dismissed it as they started their zombie target practice session. The overheard conversation between Steve and Ella while he cleared out the office was now messing with him rather than pissing him off as it originally had. One point that was settling into his soul with a deep ache was Steve’s admission that he and Sam had literally taken the fight to HYDRA’s doorstep while looking for him. Steve told Bucky that he’d searched for him, but had never gone into detail. He certainly never mentioned that he and Sam had infiltrated multiple HYDRA bases alone. Alone with no backup and probably one of Steve’s half-baked, impulsive plans. It’s a wonder they weren’t both killed, though Steve seemed to have more than his fair share of luck with reckless offensives. The thought still turned Bucky's stomach.   
  
He’d been cutting his own swath through HYDRA, feeling it was the least of the penance he could offer up. The memories had  trickled back to him erratically, and he’d planned on staying as far away from Steve as he could. The longer he went and the more the older memories manifested, the harder that plan was to follow. The pull in his chest worsened the more he remembered from their youth. One winter in particular haunted him, and the memory of it was what eventually brought him back into Steve's orbit. He'd started shadowing Steve, unable to stay away, but still unable to do more than watch over his punk from a sniper's vantage point. When that monstrous creature had crawled up from the ocean and nearly taken Steve out with its death throes, Bucky hadn't been able to keep his distance. When Steve pleaded with him to stay at his side rather than over his shoulder, Bucky hadn't been able to say no. When he would question that decision in the days and weeks following, remembering that December decades ago would be what kept him from disappearing again.

  
_The winter of 1936 had been particularly brutal. A heavy snow had been followed by an ice storm, knocking out power to a huge part of the city. Their landlord had given them several heavy blankets but they still lay shivering together, gleaning what body heat they could build up between them. Bucky felt horrible as Steve’s chest rattled with the bronchitis he was battling yet again. He’d been working hard to get a promotion down at the docks but it hadn’t come through yet. If he could just land it, it would set them up with enough to get into one of their landlord’s better units. Not that it would do much good with the power out, but the one on eighth floor two buildings over was much better insulated. Keeping Steve away from the frosty drafts would help tremendously._  
  
 _“Doin’ okay, punk?”_  
  
 _“Yeah.” Steve kept his answer short to avoid another round of coughing. He was partially propped up and on his side with Bucky wrapped around him from behind. They had the covers up over both their heads, and Bucky had his face tucked against Steve’s neck. Even heated breath was held precious and put to use in keeping the space around their bodies as warm as possible. The humidity of it was far better for Steve to breathe than the cold, dry air outside their makeshift igloo anyway._  
  
 _“I’ll talk to Mr. Tanner again on Monday. Maybe we can still get into 82 before it gets snatched up,” Bucky murmured, pressing closer to Steve’s back. He wanted to wrap an arm around Steve’s waist, but didn’t dare._  
  
 _“It’s okay, Buck. You’ll get it eventually. You’re the best guy they’ve got on that crew.”_  
  
 _“I don’t want eventually,” he gritted. “I’m sorry we’re still stuck in this shithole, Stevie. I’m sorry you’re stuck here. You should be over in 82 where there’s no drafts.”_  
  
 _“It’s not so bad,” Steve mumbled, his words partly muffled by his face being tucked against his pillow. “If I gotta be in a shithole, at least I got my own personal heater. Don’t even have to get outta bed to adjust it.”_  
  
 _He’d reached back and grabbed Bucky’s arm to wrap around himself and Bucky’s breath had stopped along with his heart for a moment. He didn’t know if Steve was becoming more ill or was talking while half asleep, but he wasn’t going to overthink it. What he felt about Steve was not a feasible option to explore, but he would allow himself this moment to pretend that it was as he tightened his arm around Steve and buried his nose into the soft, blond hair that smelled of Ivory soap._  
  
 _“You’re outta your mind, punk,” Bucky whispered._  
  
 _“Yeah, guess I am.”_  
  
  
Bucky was jarred from his thoughts as Ella poked him hard in the side. He stopped abruptly and glared down at her before he remembered she couldn’t see his eyes through his goggles. He yanked them upward. She gestured for his phone and he shot Steve a thunderous look and pointed his way. Ella shook her head and gestured again. She needed to talk to him, not Steve. The fact that she didn’t want to just use Steve’s and show it to him told him it was at least somewhat private and had him groaning inwardly.   
  
So likely something he had no desire to discuss with her.   
  
He handed his phone over anyway, not really seeing  a way around it. She didn’t type for long before handing it back with a darkened screen. He thumbed on the display and rolled his eyes.   
  
YOU’RE BOTH IDIOTS YOU KNOW THAT?   
  
He glanced back at her over his shoulder, his body language making clear what his re-hidden eyes could not. He holstered his gun long enough to type back.   
  
SO I’VE BEEN TOLD   
  
He practically tossed it back to her, ignoring Steve’s confused, questioning look. He fought back an audible growl as she handed it back.   
  
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BOTH BEEN LIKE THIS?   
  
Right. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but it was still so not a conversation he wanted to have with her. Ever. Morbid curiosity had him typing a a responding question regardless. A cold sweat began to spread across his skin, fueled by the knot forming in his gut.   
  
LIKE WHAT??   
  
He shoved the phone back at her with a huff that was louder than he intended. Steve’s expression behind them was bordering into sheer panic, looking like he was half expecting them to come to blows at some point He could always read over Ella’s shoulder, but thankfully Steve’s sense of propriety would never allow him to do that to her.   
  
Bucky tapped his comm hard once. _Calm down._   
  
Who was going to calm Bucky down was anyone’s guess though.   
  
It took Ella longer to type this time, and it made Bucky’s discomfort bloom. When she handed it back finally, the answer that lit the screen stopped him short in his tracks and lodged his heart firmly into his throat.   
  
OBLIVIOUSLY IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER AND REFUSING TO STEP UP AND FESS UP.   
  
Bucky stared down at the words as his stomach seemed to drop into an abyss. It was fortunate they weren’t actually speaking because he didn’t think he could have if he wanted to. His comm clicked in his ear again, but he didn’t answer. The text was burning itself into his eyes as he stared at them, unblinking.   
  
Steve stepped past Ella long enough to punch the back of his shoulder and he reacted by immediately swiping his thumb over the corner of the screen that automatically deleted the entire thread. Bless Tony Stark and his practical spy implementations. Bucky opened a blank screen and typed decisively. He held the phone up to Ella’s face, his fingertips white with anger where he gripped the device.   
  
DISCUSSION OVER.   
  
She moved to grab it but he yanked it away from her reach, killed the screen and pocketed it. He sighed when Steve handed over his own phone. He looked down and wanted to turn and scream at both of them.   
  
WTH??   
  
He jerked the cell from Steve’s hand and typed, not bothering to correct the typos he knew would make Captain America twitch. He shoved it back at Steve and pointed his finger at his best friend in warning.   
  
ONE NOSY PERSN IN THIS PLACRE IS ENOGH. BCK OFF.   
  
It was harsher than he wanted it to be, but anything less would have Steve pulling him out to the next floor to talk about it, and Bucky couldn’t do that now. His stomach was rolling with anxiety and, even worse, hope. Hope was something Bucky fairly detested; it was a vicious, hateful thing that had been beaten and shocked out of him by HYDRA too many times.

Steve looked to Ella but thankfully she just shrugged and held up her hands. As much as Bucky was cringing over the text he gave Steve, apparently it wasn’t enough. At the next landing, Bucky felt Steve’s hands hook into the back of his harness and jerk him toward the door. He didn’t fight Steve, allowing himself to be dragged out of the stairwell and into the hallway of Floor 68.

"What the hell is going on with you two,” Steve demanded, keeping his voice low but steely.   
  
“Nothing that needs to be discussed right now,” Bucky answered. “We don’t have time for this. We should be on the damn roof already.”   
  
“Yeah, we should. We’re in the middle of a shitstorm, but you two can’t stop picking fights with one another so what was that about just now?”   
  
“Nothing,” they both answered him simultaneously, and Bucky was glad for his goggles still keeping his eyes hidden. Steve wasn’t impressed.   
  
“Fine. Buck, gimme your phone.”   
  
“What, are you five again, Steve? No. I’m not giving you my phone.”   
  
“Bucky, I mean it,” Steve warned, holding out his hand.   
  
“No. I deleted it. There’s nothing to see.”   
  
“I can recall it. Give me your phone. Now.”   
  
“What?” Bucky’s whole body went clammy again because he knew Steve wasn’t bluffing. Steve never bluffed. Not like that anyway. “How the hell-?”   
  
“Nothing is ever gone on a Stark phone, not entirely. Tony gave me an override code in case of emergency.”   
  
_Oh._  
  
 _Shit._  
  
Bucky wanted to be furious with the lack of privacy, but the sheer terror of Steve reading the conversation with Ella was trumping everything. Being pissy at one another was one thing, but the kind of awkwardness that text thread would bring down could be deadly in this environment.   
  
“Steve, I’m not giving you my phone. You need to respect-”   
  
The smell hit them all at the same time. Even Ella gagged and jerked her sleeve up to her nose. Steve and Bucky’s sense of smell wasn’t really directional but it didn’t need to be. They both looked to the end of the hall, but Bucky didn’t wait to know how many could raise an odor far worse than Floor 47.   
  
“Ella, spheres. Now.”   
  
She pulled them from her jacket pocket. Bucky took one from her as they began backing toward the stairwell.   
  
“Oh God,” she whispered as bodies began filing into the hallway from a door emblazoned with _'DeWit, Stockard & Sheuller'_ in fancy, professional lettering. They were all dressed in party attire and it looked like the entire company was in attendance. One after another they began actually sniffing the air, so apparently their sense of smell sharpened the longer they were dead.  
  
Not good at all.   
  
Bucky grabbed the other sphere from Ella and armed both. “ _Run_ ,” he commanded as he hurled both weapons down the hall.


	4. "Huh... Stark upgraded 'em."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two super soldiers play Keep Away.

They were barely inside the stairwell when a sharp whine, then the roar of displaced air sounded. Steve slammed the door shut and held it closed with his shield, placing as much of himself behind it as possible. He tucked his face into the crook of his arm to avoid the blast coming at them. Bucky pulled Ella into the corner and wrapped himself around her, covering their heads with his arms. Steve growled loudly as the force of the heated air threatened to blow the door open, and Ella shook with terror as the temperature in the stairwell became unbearable.

Steve managed to keep the door mostly shut as the blast tried to escape the hallway, but it still did considerable damage as it funneled into the stairwell. There were several crashes as it blew doors open on the levels below them, and sucked emergency lights and exit signs from the walls. When it finally died down to a steady wheezing, Steve partially unfolded himself, sank to the floor, and panted from the exertion. The door at his back no longer shut properly, the force of the blast having warped the middle section to the curve of Steve’s shield. There couldn’t possibly be anything still threatening left in the hallway, but he wasn’t taking any chances; he let his weight lean against the door while he tried to catch his breath.  
  
To his left, Bucky was also panting as he pulled down his goggles and moved backward enough to check Ella for injuries. Without his body to brace her into the corner she fell over, coughing and gasping for cooler air. Well-practiced from years of helping Steve battle a litany of illnesses, Bucky helped her sit upright and rubbed her back.  
  
“Count to ten in your head,” he rasped, and Steve’s heart seized up over hearing those words again. He practically felt Bucky’s hand on his own back, and closed his eyes briefly as he remembered how gentle and reassuring that touch was.  Just as he had many times before, Ella fought against it, her mind panicking over her inability to get a full, deep breath. Bucky remained steady beside her until she finally gagged, gasped sharply, then sagged against him. Satisfied that she’d stabilized her lungs and was beginning to calm, he pulled a tiny packet from one of his pouches. As he ripped it open, Steve noticed the blistering on the back of his hands, but Bucky’s skin was already rupturing those blisters to heal itself. As his eyes traveled upward, he saw the singed tips of hair on the back of Bucky’s head. He fought back a wave of anxiety, knowing it was unfounded and that Bucky’s wounds would be gone in less than an hour. Looking down at his own hands, only one was affected, but he felt the dampness of rapidly healing blisters on the back of his neck.  
  
“Here, put a little of this on your tongue to ease the dryness.” He squeezed out some of the clear gel onto Ella’s fingertips, then sucked some into his own mouth before tossing the packet to Steve. “You too, Stevie.”  
  
Whatever the gel was, the relief was instantaneous. Not only did he feel like he’d had a full glass of water, but the gel left behind a chilled, minty sensation all the way down his gullet. Ella’s distress was also greatly lessened, though Steve winced when Bucky lifted her hands to examine them. Unlike them, the blistering on the backs of her hands would need to be tended to immediately, both for the pain and to prevent infection.  
  
“Do you have anything on you to wrap those?” Steve asked him. He’d left his first aid basics in his duffle in lieu of packing more ammo. Bucky shook his head but Ella nodded wearily.  
  
“Backpack,” she whispered, her lips trembling. Bucky unzipped the pack and looked inside.    
  
“Oh… Girl Scout…” he teased as he pulled a small medical tin and a roll of sealed gauze from the backpack.  
  
“Fuck you, Bucky,” she muttered as her body bristled in annoyance. The small smile on Bucky’s face let Steve know that his gentle goading was to shift her attention from her hands as much as possible.  
  
“Sorry, not my type doll,” he murmured, though the smile was still there.  
  
“Yeah,” Ella huffed softly, “ _I know_.”  
  
Bucky froze for only a second, but Steve’s attentive eyes caught it. He found himself back to wondering what the text conversation had been about. Steve couldn't help but stare at Bucky while he so carefully applied an analgesic cream to Ella's hands, then gently wrapped them in gauze. If Bucky felt Steve watching him, he gave no sign of it.

"How much pain are you in? Does anything else hurt?" Despite his earlier attitude with Ella, Bucky kept his voice soft and almost soothing.

"I'm okay,"she answered with determination, even with her voice still sounding shaky. "My chest hurts a little... like I can't get a full breath."

"Heated air,"Bucky responded with an apologetic tone. "Two dragon grenades might have been a bit too much. Sorry."

"Those weren't the flash bombs?" Steve blinked at Bucky incredulously. "I thought they were flash bombs, Bucky!"

"I suggested using flash bombs," Bucky muttered, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of The Look, "but I never said that's what I gave Ella."

"Bucky-"

"I'm _sorry_ , Steve. I didn’t think one would be enough. I didn't stop to account for the hallway being... a hallway… but they usually don’t do as much damage as these two did."

"Steve, it's okay," Ella called quietly. "There could have been over a hundred attending that office party. They're moving faster, and their sense of smell looked like it was getting sharper. I'd rather take out the whole floor than risk them all getting loose."

Steve gave them both a weary frown. True, the Winter Soldier never minded a healthy dose of carnage, but Bucky was back to favoring finesse. He normally avoided mayhem in favor of clean shots and stealth now... or at least he did on the missions they partnered on. He was never in much of a mood to talk to Steve about the solo jobs Fury sent him on. Whether that was because he no longer wanted to work solo, or he just didn't like the jobs Fury bestowed upon him, Steve couldn't say. He'd sometimes ask, but never pushed when all he got from Bucky was a grunt and abrupt change of subject.

This didn't seem to be the time to push the issue either.

"Do we need to worry about the rest of the tower pancaking on us?" he questioned, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.  He mostly succeeded.

"Nah,"Bucky huffed as he stood and helped Ella to her feet. "Not enough force-"

"I beg to differ, Buck," Steve cut across him with more annoyance in his tone than he intended. Even Ella gave the ex-assassin a slack-jawed stare, and Bucky fell back to being indignant.

"Well yeah, against doors and windows, but those are specific to interior detonations where you want everything gone but the structure." He gestured to the ruined door behind Steve. "Those are weak spots, and the blast is purely wind based to exploit them. It's heated to boil anything within 30 feet of detonation, and put most everything else out of commission beyond that until it loses temperature and wind speed."

"Well you two I get being mostly unscathed," Ella frowned, "but why am I not toast?"

"Bucky," Steve answered, unable to keep his pride from making his lips round subtly upward. He rose to his feet and leaned over to pull a bit of singed hair from Bucky's nape. He held it out for Ella to see.

"He covered you and got the worst of it."

Ella motioned him to bend a bit and she did the same to him.

"You both did," she murmured, showing him the handful of crispy hair. She eyed the back of Steve’s neck with a wince, then pointed to their hands. “Do we need to deal with those or…?”

“Already healing,” Bucky informed her with a shake of his head. “No need."

A wry smile took over as Steve looked fondly at his best friend. Bucky's smirk was firmly back in place now that Steve was no longer ready to pitch a fit over the dragon grenades. Steve couldn't stay mad at him even if he truly wanted to... which he didn't.   
  
"God, you both really are nuts," she sighed. They shrugged at Ella in unison, Steve sweeping an arm out toward the next staircase.

"It's what we do, ma'am."

 

*********************************************************

 

Before they started up the stairs, Steve decided he needed to see the hallway. Ella's curiosity got the better of her and she peeked out from behind him.

"Holy..." She couldn't even finish her thought as her mouth fell open, and she held onto Steve to avoid being knocked over. The wind tunnel caused by the blown windows was unsettling, to put it mildly. Bucky, who'd been perfectly content to know that he'd achieved his immediate goal, was happy to stand back and let them gape until Steve glanced back at him. Apparently the sickened fascination eating at Steve's gut showed plainly upon his face, so Bucky stepped into the hall with them.

The walls were charred, but it looked superficial to Steve. What bothered him, and apparently Ella as well, was the tangle of reeking bodies crushed against the end of the hallway. The bits that were still writhing only made it as far as the edge of the blown exterior window, where they were promptly pulled out of the tower by the force of the wind tunnel's suction. Steve had to look away when his vision started to blur from unbidden memories of Bucky being blown from Zola's train.

Bucky frowned, wrinkled his nose, and crossed his arms.

"Huh." Oblivious to Steve's discomfort, he grunted loudly enough to be heard over the din. "Stark upgraded 'em."

Ella and Steve looked back at him blankly, so he explained.

"The old ones wouldn't have taken out the exterior windows." He eyed the ceiling warily now. "We should go."

He turned back for the stairwell, leaving Steve and Ella to stare after him with dumbstruck expressions.

"He's _your_ friend," Ella finally yelled, stiffly moving to follow Bucky.

"Yeah..." Steve murmured, not sure whether to be terrified for them, or to bust out into his own fit of hysterical giggling.

He opted instead for stunned silence.

 

****************************************

 

The stairs were slower going as Ella's lungs recovered from breathing in the heated air. The stairwell's ambient temperature was still elevated, but now also humid. None of them wanted to acknowledge the physics behind that anymore than they wanted to revisit the scene at the end of Floor 68.

Bucky wavered between acute anxiety over Ella's muttered comment about not being Bucky's type, and whether or not he might have inadvertently set off a chain of events that would lead to collapsing the top floors of the tower. He'd have to discuss better disclosure of "upgrades" with Stark Jr. when they got back. Before, he used to do well to shut Stark Sr. up by the half hour mark when he rambled on over the improvements he regularly made to their weapons and equipment. Junior's idea of updating Bucky was 'I added a little extra kick to those, so be careful.'

The definition of 'careful' for either of the two surviving Howling Commandos was highly subjective; it was something they tended to bicker about quite often.  

Bucky knew Steve wasn't about to let go of his curiosity over the text exchange before Floor 68. He might be quiet now, but that didn't mean he'd stay that way. Some things Steve knew to let go of if Bucky evaded, like nightmares, episodes, or just touchy subjects. Bucky's gut told him this wasn't going to be one of those things. No matter how many cover stories Bucky came up with though, he knew they were too flimsy for Steve not to smell bullshit. As much as they'd both changed, Steve still saw right through Bucky, and that was as annoying as it was comforting.

It didn't help that it was taking forever to get out of this building, and Bucky was thinking they should have just rappelled down like he'd originally suggested. He would have been okay with Ella puking on him if it meant avoiding the clusterfuck they were dealing with inside. A lot of things would be better than this, especially against the fear of being outed to Steve. He wasn't worried that it would endanger their friendship. Steve could forgive him anything, even accidentally dropping a building down around them (which was sadly not an isolated case since he and Junior were still working on their tactical communication skills). No, it was the change of dynamic that scared the shit out of Bucky. What he and Steve shared was easy and comfortable. It worked beautifully, dropped buildings and super-heated hallways aside, and that was what he couldn't risk. Not ever.

A nudge to his arm startled him, then Ella shoved Steve's phone at him. She was grinning at Bucky, so she clearly didn't have the same societal hangups that Steve did about reading someone else's texts. Bucky wanted to glare at her, but didn't dare risk exposing his eyes to Steve to do so. He tried to react nonchalantly as he took the phone from her and swiped the screen to unlock it.

NEED YOU TO TELL ME WHATS GOING ON. EVERYTHING IS OFF WITH YOU NOW.

Bucky allowed himself an internal sigh as he shouldered his rifle and kept his answer non-combative.

ZOMBIES STEVE.

He didn't look back as he handed the phone off to Ella. She didn't even attempt to mask the fact that she was reading the conversation, because she openly snorted at his answer. That did earn her a look from Bucky. He pointed at her in warning about the noise, but didn't raise his goggles.

When the phone came back, Bucky's heart ached when he read it, especially when he heard Steve's single, loud tap of frustration in his comm.

PLEASE STOP LYING TO ME.

He'd give anything to do that, but even if he had the guts for it, he couldn't do it here. Not during this screwed mission they found themselves a part of.

ELLA TALKING STUPID SHIT WHEN I DONT WANT DISTRACTIONS. HAPPY?

He knew Steve wanted to pull him into the hallway again, but they actually did try to learn from experience. So when he got the phone back, Bucky decided it was better to just have it out, and sat down on the stairs while pulling out his own phone. He didn't feel like watching Ella's reaction as she read each pass.

NOT REALLY. WHATS SO BAD YOU COULDNT JUST TELL ME IN THE HALL?

Bucky handed Steve's phone back and typed his response before hitting send. He tried to keep his face blank, mouth and shoulders relaxed.

DROP IT STEVE. NOT THE TIME OR PLACE.

This felt about as childish as anything they'd ever done; having a silent, fuming text argument while two feet from each other, with a civvie between them looking like she was center court at Wimbledon. His phone lit up.

NO. ITS BOTHERING YOU TOO MUCH.

Bucky popped his neck and responded. He glanced up at Steve, moving only his eyes so it wouldn't be detected. His best friend's goggles were pushed up onto his forehead. His face was pinched, and his stance was tense.

WHAT BOTHERS ME IS U NOT BKING OFF WHEN I ASK U TO.

Steve rubbed at his face and typed. Again, Bucky's screen lit up.

BECAUSE HALLWAY WAS SLOPPY. YOURE NEVER SLOPPY. COULD HAVE JUST TOLD ME BY NOW. WOULD BE OVER WITH.

That was sadly spot on, Bucky couldn't deny that, but the alternative was not an option. He openly looked up at Steve now, then back down to type.

WE R AARGUING IN THE MIDDDLE OF A FUCKING MISSION STEVE. WHAT KND OF SHIT IS THAT?

Steve read the text and shook his head at his phone before answering. Outwardly Bucky watched him passively, but behind the safety of his opaque goggles, he stared at the way Steve’s jaw hitched to the side. It was an indicator of Steve’s growing annoyance, one that Bucky always found magnetic when it wasn’t aimed at him. Hell, it _was_ aimed at him, and Bucky still couldn’t look away from it. There were a lot of things about Steve that Bucky wished he didn’t have to share with the world, and that was one of them.

NOT LIKE ITS THE FIRST TIME. JUST ANSWER.

Bucky lost his poker face and scowled as he stabbed his thumbs over his phone's keyboard.

NEEDS TO BE THE LAST TIME. JUST STOP.

He hit send, stood up, pointedly put his phone back into his pocket, then started up the stairs again. He didn't bother to look back at either of them as he climbed, even if his body felt like it was now on fire.

 

**************************************************************

 

Steve's temper was building to a critical point, and when Bucky ended the discussion, it nearly got the better of him. He couldn’t wrap his head around Bucky dodging him like this. Ella was a stranger to them, so what could she possibly have said to him that would cause such a strong reaction, and throw Bucky into such a strange headspace? Maybe he could wear Ella down if not Bucky. They were nearly to the 70th floor when he handed his phone over.

TELL ME.

He didn’t need to say anything more, and if he could keep their exchange under Bucky’s notice, even better. Ella’s answer was a question of her own.  
  
CAN I READ?  
  
Steve debated the wisdom of it, but gave her a quick nod of consent. His gut was telling him this was too important to let go of. Bucky had never dug his heels in like this before, although to be fair Steve rarely pressured him. There were things Bucky would likely never be able to tell him and, while it bothered Steve, he didn’t feel entitled to anything beyond info that might ultimately help his best friend.

This felt entirely different in a way that Steve couldn’t put down to anything specific. Mainly he was distracted, and Bucky was never distracted in the field. He made Sergeant as quickly as he did for a reason. He was an unparalleled sniper for a reason. His focus was absolute; nothing pulled his attention from his objective. HYDRA’s influence only enhanced that focus by removing any emotions that they could. Bucky was now at a point where he could slip back into Winter Soldier’s tunnel vision without fearing he wouldn’t be able to slip back out  when the mission was completed. Steve had a feeling the jobs Fury sent Bucky on required more Winter Soldier than Bucky was comfortable discussing, but Steve had told him more than once that he never needed to feel obligated to anyone when accepting or denying certain missions. Steve’s ultimatum to Fury had been crystal clear: Bucky was not to be pressured or manipulated into anything, otherwise Steve would leave and not look back. Bucky wasn’t supposed to know about that condition, but he wasn’t stupid. He might have found out or been told. 

His phone appeared in front of him.  
  
DO YOU REALLY NOT SEE IT?  
  
Steve frowned at her. No, he didn’t. What was Ella seeing that he couldn’t?

I GUESS NOT. ??  
  
As he waited for Ella read and respond, he watched Bucky ascend the flight of stairs ahead. He seemed determined to ignore them both, but there was no way Bucky didn't notice that Ella had Steve's phone. The tense set of his shoulders and his furrowed brows were red flags that Bucky wasn't happy that Steve was still pushing the issue.

WHAT'S THE ONE THING YOU KEEP FROM HIM? THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

Steve read the message several times. His brain wanted to seize up along with his chest. Surely Ella meant something other than what he thought? The one thing Steve could never tell Bucky was the one thing he thought he'd kept far enough under the surface that no one would ever see it. Ella Aubrey was trained to see things that others would miss though. She made a living looking at the tiniest of details, and building volumes of knowledge from practically nothing at all. She had to have a keen eye for symptoms and reactions, so of course little ticks and twitches would be like glaring neon signs to her. If he'd let anything unknowingly slip, she would likely have caught it.   
  
Steve attempted to play dumb.

I DONT. ??

Ella shook her head as she read his reply, and Steve felt his skin prickle with cold sweat. She handed it back to him with knowing eyes. Very knowing eyes.

ARE YOU JUST LYING TO ME OR YOURSELF TOO?

Panic had his guts trying to liquify in his abdomen as he poured over their conversation in the hallway when Bucky was clearing the office. Had he given himself away then? Bucky still had a lot on his mind where HYDRA was concerned, and the last thing Steve wanted was this being thrown at him. Outwardly Steve knew Bucky would blow it off as no big deal, but inwardly he would fixate over it. Bucky took no issue with guys being of a different persuasion before he fell, and it certainly didn't seem to faze him now either, but he wasn't that way himself. He'd always been a ladies man. Just because he had no interest in women now didn't change that; he didn't have an interest in entanglements of any kind.

I DONT KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.

YES YOU DO.  
  
The exchange was lightning fast, and Steve huffed out a breath. It was quiet, but to serum-enhanced ears, he may as well have grunted loudly. It earned him a warning look from Bucky, but he was too anxious to care. He needed Ella to just spell it out for him because he couldn’t afford to misunderstand what she was getting at.

CAN YOU JUST EXPLAIN. I DONT LIKE GUESSING GAMES.

Another shake of her head, but her fingers flew over the screen.

YOU LIKE HIM. TELL HIM.

Steve tried more obfuscation, hoping he could get her to doubt whatever vibes she’d picked up from him.

OF COURSE I DO. HES MY FRIEND.  
  
Ella gave him no outward reaction, but her fingers hit the screen of his phone with a little more force than before. It couldn’t be comfortable either, since the movement was probably causing her bandages to rub the back of her hands.

DONT BE OBTUSE STEVE. TELL HIM YOU LOVE HIM.

_Oh Christ._

Steve stopped climbing the steps, his lungs refusing to pull any air. His vision tunneled so badly that he barely saw Bucky in time to yank his phone away from the metal hand that tried to pull it from his grasp. He stumbled backward as Bucky made another try for the phone. Their chests collided as Bucky's arm shot out for Steve's hand, and he let loose a frustrated snarl when Steve still managed to keep it from him. Steve’s back hit the wall, and they listed sideways as they continued to struggle.  
  
Bucky just about had his fingers wrapped around the phone when Steve’s mind suddenly went incredibly calm. This could not happen. Bucky could not read those messages. Steve wrenched his arm away and slammed his phone into the concrete wall. The phone exploded under the force of Steve’s strength, which was further fueled by his desperation. Bucky jerked away and staggered backward, his mouth hanging slack with shock over Steve’s uncharacteristic move.  
  
Breathing hard, Steve clenched his jaw and tried to play it off as being instigated by Bucky’s stubborn refusal from before. “If I can’t read yours, you don’t get to read mine. Deal with it.”  
  
They stared at each other with tension and anger crackling around them until Ella pushed between them. She shoved at both of their chests, trying to make them back up and calm down.   
  
“You’re both ridiculous,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice as low as possible. “Stop it! Just be honest- _Bucky..!_ ”  
  
She broke off her admonition and called after Bucky as he spun on his heel and took off up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Steve was about to tell Ella that she had it all wrong when they heard a crash above them. Steve ran ahead of Ella and rounded the turn of the staircase to find Bucky on his back with a hisser on top of him. His rifle was the only thing keeping the creature’s snapping jaws at bay. Bucky was trying to get the leverage to hurl the creature off of him, but a maintenance cart had been abandoned on Floor 71’s landing, leaving him with no real room to maneuver.   
  
Steve grabbed the hisser by the back of its blood-stained leather jacket and hauled it off of his best friend. He got a handful of shoulder-length hair and smashed it face-first into the wall. It went immediately still in his grip, and Steve let it slide limply to the floor. Bucky’s face when he scrambled to his feet was all thunder and ice. His goggles had been pulled from his face and hung loosely around his neck, leaving his expression on clear view. He zeroed in on Ella as she stepped from behind Steve, and put a finger into her face.  
  
“This is why I said no distractions. This is why I didn’t want to take this fucking mission. You put a woman between two men and it all goes to shit. No more messages. No more messing with my head... or his. We get to the roof and we call in a chopper, and you keep your fucking opinions-”  
  
Bucky cut off abruptly as the door to Floor 71 flew open and banged into the maintenance cart. Seven hissers barreled into the landing, and neither soldier hesitated. Steve shoved Ella into Bucky’s chest and had his shield on his arm with blinding speed. Bucky pushed Ella toward the far corner.  
  
“Draw your gun. Shoot anything that gets past us,” he ordered, then was at Steve’s side with his knife out. It didn’t take but a few seconds for them to kill the creatures, but two more waded in behind them. Steve tried to shut the door, but it bounced back open; the latch lock was busted and likely the reason the maintenance cart was there to begin with. Steve's eyes watered from the sudden, dreaded smell. He glanced into the hallway and sucked in his breath at the number of hissers coming toward him. It was worse than the law office.  
  
They weren’t moving slowly anymore either.  
  
Steve slammed the door as hard as he could, bending it slightly into the doorframe. It wouldn’t hold but a minute or two against the push of that many zombies, but there was nothing else he could do.   
  
“Get to the roof,” he barked, leaning against the door.  
  
Bucky was having none of it.   
  
“You fucking _know_ _better_ ,” he growled. He grabbed Steve’s arm and hauled him up the stairs. “Get Ella and come on.”  
  
Bucky didn't give Steve the chance to argue as he ran past the biochemist, his rifle at the ready. Steve did what he probably should have done earlier, and picked Ella up so he could run the stairs. She shifted in his grip and looked over his shoulder, surprising him as she tried to take aim at the creatures clambering up the stairs behind him. He doubted she was hitting much with the way he was jostling her around, but the effort was appreciated.   
  
“Save your ammo,” Bucky yelled over the stair railing. Ella stopped firing, but kept the gun aimed in case any hissers got too close. The commotion behind them didn’t sound like a small number to Steve, so he focused on just getting up the last four flights of stairs before something else went to hell.  
  
Bucky was in the process of unlocking the door to the roof when they were halfway up the stairs. Steve was about to yell at him when Bucky swung the door open. Steve ran through the doorway and heard Bucky slam it shut behind them. He let Ella down and turned to watch as his childhood friend re-engaged the lock. Bucky stepped back and stared at the door as thumping and scratching began on the other side. He snapped back into tactical mode and yanked his phone from his pocket. He stood silent for a moment, then his voice growled out a command.  
  
“Fury… get us a chopper now. We’re on the roof of the tower.” Whatever Fury’s response was, it didn’t make Bucky happy at all. “You listen to me, you son of a bitch, you sent us into this fucking death trap, you’d better fucking well get us a chopper out of here.”  
  
He wasn’t yelling, which might have been reassuring to Ella, but she didn't know him well enough. Bucky never yelled in the field except to make himself heard over loud noises. His tone right now was one that gave Steve chills every time he heard it, because it meant Bucky’s temper was about to go supernova. Someone else would have to debrief Bucky when they got back to DC, because Steve was going to have to keep him away from Fury for a good long while after this mess.  
  
“Goddamnit!”  
  
Bucky looked ready to hurl his phone, but Steve quickly put a hand to his shoulder to calm him. Bucky chewed at his lip, shaking his head as he silently fumed.  
  
“C’mon, Buck, what’d he say?”  
  
“Nothing’s gonna happen tonight. Governor Brown has ordered most of Southern California’s airspace closed to anything not local military. No exceptions. There’s a lethal force order in place and he won’t tackle the red tape until morning. He’s not about to incite a political nightmare by sending Stark or Rhodey in against Brown’s orders.” Bucky pocketed his phone and clasped his fingers atop his head.  
  
“So basically… fuck us,” he muttered angrily, leaning back to look up at the night sky. The gusty wind had cleared the normally hazy air so far more constellations were visible than usual. In the summertime before the war, they used to lay on the roof of their building with a dubiously-obtained bottle of booze. Bucky would point out all the constellations and tell Steve the names of the individual stars while Steve memorized them to sketch later. That was after he’d memorized the look of wonder on Bucky’s face, his eyes drooping and his smile lazy from the alcohol.  
  
 _“See that big red one in Orion’s shoulder…? That’s Betelgeuse. It’s gonna explode someday… They jus’ named a Navy ship after it, Stevie… The other shoulder is Bellatrix… They say it’s eight times bigger than our sun and it’s so white ‘cause it’s so much hotter… The knees are Saiph and Rigel. Rigel’s what they call equatorial, Stevie… You can see it no matter what ocean you’re in…”_   
  
What Steve wouldn’t have given to be hiking in the San Gabriels instead of this so he could listen to Bucky spout off random facts about the sky he loved so much. He gave Bucky’s shoulder a firm squeeze to get his attention.  
  
“Hey… it’s fine. We’ll deal with it, okay?”  
  
“That door’s not gonna hold ‘til morning, Steve.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, so let’s look around and see if we can block it or brace it with something up here. This isn’t the worst scrape we’ve been in, right?”  
  
Bucky looked like he wanted to argue with that, but he closed his mouth and finally nodded. “Yeah, okay… When we get back though…”  
  
“Yeah, you can punch him in the face,” Steve sighed, giving Bucky’s head a gentle pat. “I’ll look the other direction.”  
  
“Such a pal,” Bucky deadpanned with a hint of a smile.  
  
“Just once though, Buck,” Steve warned as he began turning in a circle to take in their surroundings. There wasn’t much to work with at first glance, but maybe they could rig something.  
  
Bucky’s eyes narrowed at that, but then they brightened hopefully. “How ‘bout I just break his leg instead? Fury on crutches would be a hoot.”  
  
“Bucky… _no_.”  
  
“You’re just no fun, Stevie. No fun at all.”  
  
As much as everything was fucked all to hell and back, Steve preferred this. They had snapped right back into their normal dynamic under duress, and all was forgiven. For now anyway. Steve would take it though. This they could work with, and they’d come up with a solution even if it was ridiculous and insane. By noon tomorrow they’d likely be back in DC, and all this tension and drama would be a blip fading in their rearview mirror.  
  
That’s what Steve chose to believe as he and Bucky made ready to hunker down with their civilian biochemist on the tallest fucking building west of the Mississippi, with what would end up being hundreds of fucking zombies trying to break through the access door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay in posting. I took time out from this to co-write ["First, Do No Harm"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2153814/chapters/4707264) with [SkyIsGray](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyisGray/pseuds/SkyisGray), and it was an amazing experience. If you get a chance to check it out, please do because we're really proud of how it turned out. :)
> 
> I've given up trying to estimate how many chapters this will be, but there's a little ways to go yet. I have a big chunk written ahead because the plot bunny had a litter, but it's something I haven't seen done yet and I wanted to go there. *dun dun DUN* I'll be working on cleaning that up this weekend.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! :)


	5. "Gosh, Buck, you do the sweetest things sometimes."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another round of emotional chess... because nuthin' says love quite like a nice piece of... guard rail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gone over this chapter one too many times, and have picked at it longer than I usually do, but I was stressing out over getting just the right tension to it. I'm worried I'm going to pick at it too much and kill it, so I'm just going to bite the bullet and get it posted so you all can read it. Apologies for any oopses I didn't catch. I'll give it a day and go back over it, but feel free to message me on tumblr if I've missed anything truly atrocious.
> 
> I adore all of ya! Your support just makes my day. :)

There wasn't much to work with on the roof. Ella watched the two soldiers look over every inch of the tower’s rooftop before Steve muttered something about checking the helipad. Bucky nodded silently to him as he warily eyed the door. Ella had stepped far enough away from it not to hear the scratching and thumping. Just being up here with the wind gusting around her was making her heart race fast enough to cause dizziness, which was why she refused to go anywhere near the edge of the building. It was too high up and too exposed for her not to feel the constriction of anxiety in her chest so when Bucky approached her, Ella had a hard time keeping anything close to a poker face. He frowned down at her, taking in her distress.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Is that a rhetorical question, Bucky?” she scoffed, waving toward the door. “We’re trapped on roof over a thousand feet up in the sky with no way off until morning. I’m not really feeling anything close to okay right now.”  
  
She hadn’t really intended to lash out like that, but this new development had her nerves fully frayed. Bucky’s eyes hardened for a moment, then eased back into something bordering upon sympathy. A wry smile flitted over his face and he shrugged.  
  
“Yeah… Kinda just another day at the office for us, but that’s why I asked. How are your hands? You breathing better?”  
  
The tightness in Ella’s chest backed off a fraction from his verbal olive branch so she nodded. "That stuff you gave us helped. My hands are achy but I was a chemistry student so I’ve had worse.”  
  
“Well don’t ask me to tell you what’s in that shit. That’s all Stark Jr’s people.”  
  
She smiled faintly at him, and he shifted uncomfortably, seemingly in an area he wasn’t good at navigating. His eyes darted toward the metal stairs that led to the helipad, then back to her.  
  
“Look, I’m sorry I said what I did in the stairwell. You have to understand though; this is the worst time to have that kind of shit thrown at me… at either of us. Steve…? Me an’ him…? We’re not like that. I get that you think you’re helping, but it’s messing up how we operate and none of us can afford that. Back off… _please_.”  
  
“Okay,” she shrugged. “I’ll tell you one last time that you’re wrong on this one; that Steve feels the same way you do-” Bucky tried to cut in, his eyes darkening in warning, but she held up a hand to shush him. “Let me finish and then I swear I won’t bring it up again…”  
  
His lips pursed tightly, but he seemed to realize it was the only way to finally get her to shut up about it so he nodded curtly.  
  
“He loves you.” Ella smiled sweetly at him. “He does. It’s so obvious in how he talks about you, how he looks at you, and how fiercely protective he is of you. It’s the same thing I see in you and how you are with him. You can lie to me about what you feel for Steve, but _you_ know better. I’m telling you that you’re mirror images of each other in that respect. Take that to heart and think about whether you want to live in denial for the rest of your life, because he won’t make the first move. He’s dumb like you and doesn’t see the looks you give him when his back is turned, so he thinks you won’t return his feelings. He won’t tell you because he’s afraid it would just be adding to the things you’re still working through. You’re going to have to be the one to choose, Bucky Barnes. It’s a sure thing, but you have to want it enough to tell him. I promise I won’t say anything more to him about it though.”  
  
“What did you already say?”  
  
Ella actually felt horrible for Bucky. The whole time she spoke to him, Bucky’s eyes had grown progressively wider even as he seemed to shrink in size. His gaze kept flicking toward the stairs as he watched nervously for Steve to reappear. The only time he showed any sign of fear was where Steve was concerned, and right now he looked absolutely terrified. She’d tried to nudge them both as gently as she could, but neither was responding well to it. Given time, she felt like her words would linger enough to push them forward, but the situation they were in was so unstable and dangerous that it seemed wrong to leave it to chance.   
  
“He asked what I said to you, and rather than answer outright, I asked him what the most important thing he kept from you was.”  
  
A fine sheen of sweat broke out over Bucky’s forehead and upper lip.  
  
“And…?”  
  
“And he reacted just like you did. He panicked. You went after his phone and he smashed it. You’re both fucking children, Bucky, and you need to break that cycle… at least enough to tell him. I think you’re always going to act like idiots though…”  
  
“Fuck sakes, Ella,” Bucky groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. They heard Steve’s steps on the helipad stairs, and Bucky’s eyes hardened back up. He gave her a warning look that was unnecessary, but she just held her hands up and remained quiet. She’d made him a promise and she intended to keep it.   
  
“Hey, not much of anything up there, but I was thinking we could yank a few of these railings off and wrap them around the door handle…?”  
  
Ella couldn’t help but laugh. They both turned toward her with puzzled expressions, and it just made her eyes water as she laughed harder.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she squeaked, wiping at her eyes. “You just say that so nonchalantly. It’s surreal to hear you do it.”  
  
The corner of Steve’s mouth quirked upward as he obviously replayed his words while trying to listen to them through ears that didn’t belong to a super soldier. “Yeah, I guess it would be. Just another day at the office for us though, so we forget how weird this is for you.”  
  
“Definitely weird, but I’m getting used to it a little at a time.”  
  
Ella looked at Bucky as his eyes shifted to her. A ghost of a smile flickered over his lips at hearing Steve say almost exactly the same thing he had. He seemed relieved that she didn’t call it to Steve’s attention, and his posture relaxed somewhat.  
  
“C’mon, let’s try your idea,” he grunted quietly. Steve did a double take at Ella as he turned to follow Bucky.

"Hey are you cold?" His hand hovered at the fasteners for his jacket. She shook her head. Any trembling she was doing at the moment had nothing to do with the temperature.

"Nope. Too much adrenaline still. Ask me later."

"Okay," he nodded back to her. "You could try to get some rest. I know this has been tough on you."

"You're kidding, right?" Ella gaped back at Steve as Bucky doubled back to hear their discussion. "No slight intended, Steve, but there's no way I can sleep with those things on the other side of that door."

"We're keeping watch," Bucky chimed in. "We promise not to let you sleep through anything exciting."

"It's not that. I don't want to be groggy if you do have to wake me up," she explained, then frowned when Bucky snorted and actually laughed.

"Uh... you won't be. That I can promise you."

"It's okay, Ella. Trust me on this; you're going to have to rest eventually, so you may as well sit down and start trying to do it now," Steve advised. He was always so patient, and it really did do wonders for her state of mind. She understood where Bucky was coming from, but his disposition kept her on edge. She didn't want to cause problems for either of them by being ignorant or inept, but she felt like she needed to try even harder with Bucky. They seemed a bit like oil and water, but she didn't know him outside of this mess so that was probably an unfair assessment.

"I'll sit. I can't promise anything more than that though."

Steve smiled as if it really was that easy to make him perfectly happy. Ella scoped out a spot, and leaned her back to one of the supports for the helipad.

To her left, Steve was bending a hand rail back and forth, weakening it enough to snap in two with his shield. Bucky stood behind him for a moment before he got impatient. He reached past Steve, gripped the rail with his metal arm, and ripped it free with barely a grunt. Steve stared at Bucky as the rail was offered to him like a strange sort of steampunk bouquet. Ella couldn't tell if his manly pride was wounded or not, but he finally cracked a grin and actually batted his lashes... or at least that was what it looked like to Ella.

"For me? Gosh, Buck, you do the sweetest things sometimes."

Bucky looked like a guppy with his mouth opening to retort, then shutting abruptly. Ella had to dip her head just a little to hide her own grin as Bucky pointed toward the door.

"I'll uh... I'll break them off... You do the... You secure the thing- the _door_."

"Sure thing," Steve beamed at him as he took the proffered rail and turned on his heel.

He didn't see the wide-eyed look Bucky gave him as he walked away, but Ella did. Strangely, it soothed her more than any of their reassurances had so far.

 

*******************************

 

"How do you think she's holding up?"

The question caught Steve a little off guard. It wasn't that he questioned Bucky's capacity for concern, but open empathy wasn't his strong suit these days. Steve chose not to risk a glance over his shoulder.

"I think she's doing as well as we can reasonably expect her to be doing." He grinned and nudged Bucky playfully. "Didn't think ya cared."

To be honest, Steve wasn't sure why he’d made the mildly suggestive joke about the rail, and he wasn’t really sure why he’d just made that little jab either, but the way Bucky's face skewed up made him want to backpedal immediately. Testing the waters wasn’t worth the horrified expression Bucky took on.

"Jesus, Steve, I'm not that big of an asshole, am I?"

"Nah..." Steve answered quickly. Maybe too quickly because Bucky looked up at him warily.

"Well... maybe a little,” he hedged, but then hastened to add, “but I get why. We both do. It's not fun at the time, but it's not completely unwarranted."

"You sound like a politician now," Bucky grimaced. "I've never asked you to smooth anything over for me. Don't start it now."

"I'm not, Buck." Steve finished pushing the rail through the door handle, then over the girder above the door frame. "You know I got no problem telling you when you're being a jerk."

Bucky was quiet in a way that didn't feel comfortable to Steve. When he did speak again, Steve almost wished he hadn't because it dropped his stomach to somewhere around the level of his knees.

"You know you don't have to keep anything from me either... right?"

_Fuck. Divert! Divert!_

Finally getting to bash a few zombies with his shield had done wonders for revitalizing Steve’s ability to think fast, and thank God for that.   

"Ya know... you're right. I've been secretly dying to tell you about my fascination with multicolored Fruit of the Looms. All we had were the white ones back in-"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Steve." Bucky's groan of weirded-out distaste would have been far more comical had Steve not inwardly felt the urge to be ill again. "That's not what I meant, douchebag."

"Douchebag! Wow, that's a new one for you... Tony?"  
  
"No, it's Agent Hill's favorite name for me," Bucky informed him with a sour smirk. "Didn't you know?"

Maria was a little hardcore even for Steve, but he really liked her. He appreciated her no bullshit approach and blunt candor.

"No, but I'm not sure whether to be concerned or amused by the fact that our more colorful swearing comes from Agent Hill instead of our saltier friends."

Bucky looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "If you don't think Agent Hill is salty, Stevie, I really don't know what to tell you. That woman could make Dum Dum blush if they ever met."

"Actually they did meet at one of Tony's soirees," he smiled, twisting another rail into place. It would at least hold so long as the handle remained intact.

"No shit?" Bucky glanced over at him in surprise. "I thought Dum Dum passed before they found you."

"Oh he did," Steve murmured sadly. "I wasn't there, but she told me about it. She said he was still full of it, but she didn't feel right busting his chops at that age. I told her she should have. He would have loved it."

"Yeah he would’ve," was all Bucky gave in response, and it was easy to see him get lost in his own thoughts for a bit. Bucky  always did have a soft spot for the big lug, and Dum Dum made no secret of being perfectly fine with following Bucky into the worst pits of Hell. They'd earned that respect of one another.

"Yeah... I miss that crazy bastard," Steve muttered, looking down at the concrete beneath him, then out at the tops of the surrounding buildings. "I miss all those guys."

Bucky stepped back and eyed Steve's handiwork before turning his gaze fully upon Steve.

"When did they get to go home?"

"Not long after I put the plane down," Steve answered soberly, even though he was surprised by Bucky asking. He wasn’t one for nostalgia in general, and he’d shied away from anything too sentimental since willingly coming back into Steve’s life. The information about the Commandos  that the public had access to was limited out of concern for their safety, so whatever Bucky likely looked up on the general internet was watered down in the extreme.

"I have copies of their files. You can read them whenever you'd like. I didn't offer before because you didn't seem like you were ready to talk about them... but they're there for... you know... whenever."

"Thanks," Bucky answered quietly, "but not yet. Maybe just tell me that they were okay. They got to live good, long lives, right? Got to be happy?"

"They did. Grandkids and everything. I’ve been in touch with their families. Dum Dum went over for Korea for a few months…”

“Crazy bastard,” Bucky mumbled, echoing Steve’s fond label for the transport and weapons specialist.   
  
“Yeah he apparently came back bemoaning the lack of competent men and retired from the Army. His wife told Gabe later on that it didn’t feel the same over there without all of us together as a unit. He ended up retiring a top tactician from the CIA though.” Steve wasn’t sure that sounded as happy as he meant it to but, like many soldiers after the war, Dugan’s life was a mixed bag of highs and lows. He treasured his family though, and excelled at the roles he took on during his service to his country. Steve hoped he could manage something as meaningful but, even if he didn’t, Bucky was alive, and was working and playing alongside him. If this was as good as it was going to get, Steve would be okay with it. More than okay.  
  
“I dunno what I was thinking grabbing that shield like I did,” Bucky said almost too softly for Steve to hear clearly. As Steve feared, Bucky had latched onto the sadness of his comments about Dugan’s life rather than the positive notes.  
  
“You weren’t thinking. You acted on instinct to protect me,” Steve responded gently. “You’ve done that since day one.”  
  
“Some protection,” Bucky huffed, his voice still quiet but now also angry. “I ended up leaving you alone with no one to cover you.”  
  
“And I left you alone to go through a living hell for decades.” Steve barely got the words out past the enormous lump in his throat. Tears stung the corners of his eyes before slipping down his cheeks, but he didn’t try to wipe them off or look away as he waited for Bucky to meet his gaze.  
  
“You didn’t know. No one would survive that fall. You didn’t know about the serum.”  
  
“That doesn’t matter, Buck,” Steve growled insistently, shaking his head. “I should have looked for a body to send home. You deserved that much at the very least. If I had, we might have found you first and it would all be different now. Maybe we would’ve both been in the plane... or maybe we would've both gone home eventually and died normal guys..."

"Shoulda, woulda, coulda," Bucky answered low in his throat. The anger was gone, but something else was behind his eyes that Steve couldn't identify it. "There's a lot to be said for us both being here now, and full of piss an' vinegar."

"Yeah... I can't really complain about that." He lowered his gaze as he tried to transfer his thoughts to words that wouldn’t make Bucky squirm. "I'm really grateful that you're alive and that you're here... that you remember, you know... _your life_..."

"And you."

Steve’s stomach did a spectacular flip in his gut, but he quickly schooled his expression to cover. His lips curved up on one side, almost pulling off a smirk worthy of Bucky himself.  
  
“I’d like to think I count as being part of your life.”  
  
“Goes without sayin', Steve.” Bucky’s answer was immediate, and his eyes hadn’t left Steve’s face. They were deeply intent, verging upon boring uncomfortably into him. That unnerving stillness that Bucky utilized as a sniper was fully engaged. Only his eyes moved as they flicked back and forth to scan Steve’s face. He was watching for something very specific. Steve didn't know what, but he felt a chill of terror that he’d say the wrong thing and give himself away. For all Ella’s optimism, Steve could open the door to peek beyond it, but couldn’t bring himself to step far enough inside to truly see what the room held.  
  
“Good.” A thankful smile plied Steve’s lips as he rubbed at his eyes before they teared up again. He looked at the stars above them.   
  
_Bellatrix… Betelgeuse… Saiph...Rigel..._   
  
He stared at those four stars in particular, glittering orbs representing the strongest points of Orion. The Hunter. Bucky's favorite constellation. A hunter in a winter sky. A future winter soldier who would become a hunter himself. Slithering across the sky was Hydra, barely visible here in LA. Steve’s keen eyes saw it plainly enough though, its head angling between Regulus and Procyon to creep up behind The Hunter. His hunter. His protector.

His whole world. 

  
Eventually that snake would meet its end. He’d see to it no matter what it took. They both would.  
  
Bucky finally shifted and his gaze skimmed the low sky until he saw what Steve was staring at. His eyes hardened with determination that echoed inside Steve’s chest.  
  
“We’ll get ‘em, Buck. Every last one. If it’s the last damn thing we do, we’ll take ‘em out with us if we have to. We’ll do it together.”  
  
He wasn’t sure Bucky had absorbed any of what he’d just said as his best friend turned back toward him. Except those eyes weren’t the fierce, mischievous eyes of his protector. They were the deadly, glacial blue of the Winter Soldier, and Steve’s breath froze in that cold stare. The warmth slowly returned to those eyes as Bucky finally came back from wherever his head had taken him.  
  
“Yeah, I know, Stevie. We will. This’ll only slow us down for a little while, then we’ll be back to rooting ‘em out.”  
  
His voice was eerily soft, as though talking about one of Steve’s sketches, or what sounded good for breakfast besides black coffee. Steve needed to chip away at the disquieted mood; he needed Bucky’s reassuring swagger and smart mouth back in play.  
  
“Minor setback,” he shrugged, almost rolling his eyes.  
  
“Messy setback,” Bucky hummed, his shoulders relaxing ever-so-slightly.  
  
“Smelly setback,” Steve complained. Bucky crossed his arms over his chest, and narrowed his eyes in annoyance.  
  
“Fuckin’ reeks,” he agreed, his posture straightening as he lifted his chin defiantly. “Like a goddamned trench rat.”

There it was. That outward armor that long pre-dated the war and even puberty. This was his spitfire Bucky; the guy that seemed laid back to the casual observer, but then unleashed ten kinds of hell on you without warning and barely broke a sweat doing it. This was the guy that got pissed off and fired up, but never let it cloud his plan of attack. A guy that didn’t mind being juvenile enough to literally kick a bully in the ass to humiliate him in front of his buddies. Bucky Barnes had just as much fire flowing through his veins as Steve did; he usually just knew how and where to channel it to better effect.  
  
“Still with me there, Stevie?”  
  
Steve blinked free of his reverie to see brows arched upward at him.  
  
“I fucking hated those trench rats.”  
  
Bucky’s teeth flashed in the glow of the tower’s floodlights. “Kinda funny hearing Dernier squeal like a girl over ‘em though. Almost as funny as hearing you drop the F-bomb in your Cap suit.”  
  
“Oh God,” Steve brought his hand up to cover his mouth as he laughed, ignoring Bucky’s jab about his swearing. “It’s a wonder the Germans didn’t just air-drop rats on us with the way he used to scream over them.”  
  
“And that fuckin’ high-pitched voice of his just made it worse,” Bucky added, starting to wheeze a little with the strain of his own laughter.  
  
“Remember Dum Dum waving that muzzle at him?” Steve asked, and Bucky’s nose wrinkled up as his hand went to his side to brace his ribs.   
  
“Where the hell did he even find that thing?”  
  
“I didn’t have the guts to ask.” Steve’s laughter eroded to tight giggles which got even worse when Bucky threw his hands up in shock.  
  
“Whoa, wait! Steven Grant Rogers didn’t have the guts to do something? Call the fuckin’ papers!” Bucky practically bellowed. “Holy shit.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure the answer would scar me for life,” Steve winced, rubbing at his own sides. Bucky was never going to let him live this down and he just didn’t care. It was worth it for Bucky’s reaction.  
  
And Ella’s, for that matter.  
  
**************************************************  
  
“If you yell a little louder, they might hear you down on the street,” she called, but she was grinning. So much for resting, but it was not to be when Steve and Bucky were having such a good moment between them. She was far enough away not to hear what they were saying until the end when they both started laughing and talking loudly, but she was glad for it. It seemed a private moment, though it was impossible to take her eyes from them.  
  
Steve’s eyes met Bucky’s and he nodded to the brunet. Bucky waved Ella closer as he propped his back against an air vent where he could keep a close eye on the door. Ella approached as Steve did one last walk around the circumference of the roof, and when she got close enough, Bucky patted the concrete next to him.  
  
“C’mon, have a seat. We’re gonna be here awhile and you’re starting to shiver.”  
  
Ella had only just started to feel the chills setting in. “You can see that?”  
  
“Yep,” he nodded. “Never had bad eyesight before, but now I can see shit that’s ridiculous. Helpful, but not always pleasant,” he answered, his voice clearer and more relaxed than she’d heard it since meeting them.  
  
"I can see where that could be a mixed blessing," she acknowledged with a sigh as she sat down. The cold aluminum of the air vent seeped through the lightweight material of her jacket, despite the fact that it contained kevlar. Bucky pulled the backpack from her grip and nudged her forward.

"Put that between you and the metal so you don't chill more. Once Steve gets back it won't be a problem."

Ella looked up at him to question the comment, and his mouth quirked. "I run warm from the version of serum I got, but Steve's like a fucking furnace now. You don't need covers with him, even in winter. That was a definite change."

Ella's eyebrows shot upward over that, and Bucky winced as he realized how she'd take what he’d just said.

"Winter in Europe with just a tent is a miserable thing, Ella. It's the same in Brooklyn. Steve and I grew up together, and when winter would roll through that kid was sick all the time. We didn't have much and our place was drafty as fuck, so body heat was a commodity."

Bucky grabbed Ella's hands and gently tucked them into their opposing sleeves. She blinked at the simple gesture, but quickly moved past it as he captured her attention with the explanation.

"When Steve showed up overseas and the Commandos came together, it was only natural that Steve and I would share a tent. Compared to what I’d gotten used to in the field, bunking with him after the change was downright cozy."

The gesture and the story helped to bleed off some of the adrenaline that had built up in Ella's system. Her teeth began chattering and Bucky began rubbing her arms. His protective nature was so ingrained that it seemed to kick in without him having to think much about it.

"I know. It's the adrenaline finally wearing off. It'll just be a minute though; I hear Steve coming around."

Ella didn't, but she knew his hearing was just as acute as his eyesight. Sure enough, Steve appeared a few moments later and sat down next to Ella without question.

"Okay now you're cold."

"Chilled, yeah," Ella nodded, her words choppy as she tried to still her clicking teeth. Steve scooted closer and draped his arm around her shoulders. The effect was immediate. Bucky hadn't exaggerated; warmth literally radiated from Steve. In the thick of trying to outrun zombies, Ella hadn't noticed it even though Steve had been carrying her. Proof positive that diversion was a powerful tool when dealing with the human mind.

The lack of any action combined with the warmth infusing her body had Ella's eyelids drooping almost right away. She was asleep before she even registered feeling groggy.

 

*************************************

 

"Well that was easy," Bucky whispered as Ella slumped against Steve's side. "It's that furnace thing ya got goin' on."

"Mmm," Steve waved off. "It's going on overdrive too long when you're not used to it," he murmured. "I remember that first night in a trench. Never thought I'd be able to sleep in one of those with shells going off around us, but I'd been been so pumped full of adrenaline for so long from the fighting, all it took was me sitting down and closing my eyes."

"Yeah, I remember, though I wish you would've done that when we weren't being pummeled... Not like ya ever listened all that well though, even after the serum fixed your hearing," Bucky chuckled softly.

"I listened," Steve defended quietly, and Bucky shot him a look that screamed bullshit. “Okay, mostly I listened… well… about war stuff anyway...” 

Bucky had to fight back a loud snort, but Steve at least had the decency to look contrite when Bucky clocked the back of his head with an open palm. He grinned at the harmless smack, his cheeks flushing as he bit back another round of giggles. It came as a relief to Bucky.

He’d tested the waters as they jury-rigged the door, but it almost fell apart in a way that Bucky would have hated himself for. He’d nearly opened the floodgates, and Steve had panicked and deflected with dry sarcasm. It was more a classic Steven Rogers move than anyone realized. Steve was a sarcastic, snarky little shit that just grew up to be an enormous sarcastic, snarky shit. The only thing that really changed about Steve post-serum was that he won the fights he picked. His emotions were a bit more ramped up, but they weren’t anything Bucky hadn’t seen before.  
  
So when Steve immediately hid behind sarcastic humor and nostalgia, Bucky let him do it because he couldn’t tell exactly what had panicked Steve. Was it the fear of being outed by Bucky, or the fear of Bucky outing himself? Neither option sat well with Bucky, so he had allowed Steve to steer the conversation away from soul confessions.

It was fine. Steve’s eyes were sparkling again, and that was all Bucky cared about.

  


************************************

 

**2:38 am**

Bucky's eyes snapped open as he felt a tremor beneath him. He immediately looked to the door, but it was holding still. Beside him Steve shifted, his lashes fluttering at the disturbance, but he didn't rouse enough open his eyes. Neither of them were fully asleep, though Steve was further under because Bucky had taken second watch.

He remained still, wondering if his brain had tricked him or if there had been a minor earthquake. When he felt it again, his senses went into full alert. Steve awoke fully as well, having registered the slightly stronger tremor. He wiped his hand over his face and looked at Bucky.

"Earthquake?"

Bucky shook his head minutely, his eyes fixed upon the Aon tower to their right.

"I don't think so, but double check me, Steve. Your eyes are way better than mine so watch the next building over. If we feel that again, see if it moves at all."

"Okay,"Steve acknowledged, becoming more alert and focusing upon the other tower's roof.

When the next disturbance came roughly ten minutes later, Steve's brows drew down sharply. He looked over, but Bucky knew they had a serious problem before Steve even answered.

"It didn't move, Buck."

"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of," Bucky sighed, reaching out to nudge Ella awake. "We're gonna have to-"

He couldn't finish his sentence because the whole rooftop shuttered violently beneath them. Ella sat up abruptly and sucked in her breath as her eyes went wide.

"The dragons?" Steve queried as he jumped to his feet and helped Ella up.

"Yeah, probably. Sorry, Stevie."

"S'okay but-"

Another quake and the tower groaned. The railings bent around the door handle held, but the bolts on the handle were beginning to shear. The insistent push of bodies against the door was just making it worse.

"Shit, we gotta go, Steve."

Steve’s eyes widened, but his resignation showed instantly. He knew they were out of options. Behind them, the door was rattling more insistently.   
  
“Okay, so we’re doing this then.”  
  
“Yep.” Bucky climbed over the guard railing to get to the edge of the roof. He lowered himself to the dropped level, then hauled himself up the facade to look over the side. He wanted to make sure of where the setbacks were, and he wanted to avoid the tower signage. Satisfied, he called out to Steve to help Ella over. Of course, nothing on this mission could be that easy.  
  
“What’s going on? Was that an earthquake?” Ella’s voice reached Bucky’s ears, and Steve answered immediately.  
  
“No, we think the building’s compromised now.” That was a spectacularly short answer for Steve where explanations to Ella were concerned. Bucky stopped what he was doing and watched the conversation warily.  
  
“It’s coming down?”  
  
“At least the top is,” Steve muttered. “Not sure if it’ll come down with enough force to pancake the entire tower like the Trade Centers, but doesn’t matter. We’re getting outta here.”  
  
“Okay but…” Ella was turning to look at Bucky. “what’s Bucky doing? Why aren’t we going up to the helipad? There’s a helicopter on its way, right?”  
  
 _Damn it._  
  
“Uh, there’s no helicopter coming, Ella.” Again, Steve was shying away from saying more than he had to, and his eyes found Bucky’s. He was dreading telling Ella what they intended to do, unsure of the best way to prepare her.  
  
“What…? Why?! How are we getting out of here with no helicopter?”  
  
They didn’t have time for Steve to be using kid gloves right now, so Bucky climbed back over the rails to rejoin them.  
  
“We’re going over the side. C’mon.” He latched onto Ella’s arm to get her to move along with him. She immediately braced herself, and her shoes began skidding and slipping over the concrete rooftop as Bucky pulled her.  
  
“What, no! We can’t! I can’t! Bucky _stop_!”  
  
He didn’t. He hated the terror in her voice as she struggled against him, but the building was shuddering more now and they had to move fast. When they reached the guard rails, he put her in front of him to make her go first. She spun on him and shook her head.  
  
“Bucky, I can’t do this! There has to be something-”  
  
“There isn’t, Ella. This is the only choice we have.” He kept his tone firm and unyielding, his eyes cold and unmoved by the tears spilling over her cheeks. He lifted her over the guard rail then hopped it himself. Her shoulders hunched as she shied away from even looking at the facade.  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“What you _can’t_ do is stay here. That door’s about to give so it’s a toss up whether you’d end up an hors d'œuvre or as slurry.” Bucky began pulling a fine, but high-tensile strength cable from his utility belt as he spoke. It wasn’t nearly as long as it needed to be for this, but it was reusable and his brain was already working out the logistics of using it effectively.   
  
“The building might not go,” Ella tried to reason, desperate for anything to get her out of this.  
  
“Oh it’s gonna go,” Bucky assured her, “we just don’t know how much is gonna go.”  
  
Steve’s eyes narrowed and he inhaled through his nose.  
  
“Ella, it’ll be okay. All you’ve got to do is not flail around, and you’ll be okay. You’re not going down alone. I’ll have you,” Steve told her as he joined them. Bucky overruled him though.  
  
“No. I’ll take her.” He rolled his metal fingers at Steve. “My grip won’t fatigue, and I need you to take out the windows after we’re off the last setback. We’ve only got two-hundred and fifty feet at a time with these.”  
  
“Windows…” Ella looked between them. “But what if he picks a window with too many of them behind it? This is insane-”  
  
Bucky’s gut rolled a little at the thought, but there was no helping it, and changing his mind about Steve being the one to blow the windows would just set off another argument. Besides, he was the better shot of the two of them, and could pick off any threats rapid fire.  
  
“Stevie’ll be just fine. He can handle himself,” Bucky answered, looking Steve dead in the eye. “I’m also a damn good sniper. He’ll have backup.”  
  
“With what, your toes!?” Ella rounded on him, and he saw the beads of sweat starting to trickle down her temples. She was shaking as she stabbed his chest with her finger. “You’re going to hold me, hold a rope, _and_ shoot?”  
  
“No, I’m going to hold onto you and my gun,” Bucky replied calmly. “The _cables_ attach to our belts.”  
  
He had no desire to condescend to Ella, or chide her, but he was also prepared to forcibly remove her from the roof if necessary. He’d seen good men freeze up in battle, even when they’d been doing just fine prior. Stress, fatigue, and fear were a potent mix and could snap anyone’s resolve if there was no modicum of relief. Ella had a very real phobia that was now combined with their situation already wearing her down.  
  
“Ella, we’ve done things like this before,” Steve placed a firm hand to the back of her neck. “You’re going to be okay. We’ve got this, I promise.”  
  
“You didn’t want to do this before! You said the wind was too strong.”  
  
“Not too strong, just not ideal. The roof was the option with the least risks at the time,” Steve corrected as Bucky used a small discharge switch to anchor the hook into the facade. Once they were on the first setback, a remote switch would cause the anchor to release so he could pull the cord and reset it for the next descent. He wondered yet again at Tony’s genius. Howard was a man well ahead of his time and brilliant, but his son far surpassed him. Too bad that his ego did as well.  
  
“Please, guys… _Please_. Please think of something else,” Ella pleaded, slowly backing away from the facade.   
  
Bucky had genuine compassion for her terror since he had triggers and phobias of his own, but he’d also had enough. His drop cord was set, and a fresh shudder through the tower announced that it was time to stop talking. He marched forward and gripped Ella’s arm, tugging her back toward the crown facade. She shrieked and fought like a feral cat, pounding at him with her free fist. Bucky didn’t take any of it personally, even when she tried to knee him in the balls. Angry was better than just fear alone, but he couldn’t have her lashing around while they dropped down the side. She wouldn’t hurt him, but he’d likely hurt her trying to keep a grip upon her.  
  
“HEY!” he barked at her, grabbing both of her wrists and giving her a strong, single shake. She froze, looking up at him with wide, teary eyes. “ _Cool it!_ ”  
  
Ella broke down into horrible, wracking sobs. Bucky felt like an asshole, but there was no help for it… or time. He pulled Ella close and looped the cord around his metal forearm. He couldn’t drop in the same manner as Steve while holding Ella, so he was going to end up with some rope burn if he used his right hand. He'd free up his other hand after they reached the last setback, but for these first drops he needed to make Ella feel as secure as possible so she didn't physically freak out. Steve was already perched atop the facade, ready to drop. He hadn’t affixed his cord and Bucky frowned darkly at him for it. Steve just shook his head with a self-assured smile.  
  
“Okay Ella, I need you to-”  
  
Behind them, the door finally gave way. Bodies toppled over one another as the creatures struggled to all get through the door all at the same time. The urgency in Steve’s voice was in sharp contrast to the childlike whimper Ella emitted.   
  
“Buck, come on!”  
  
“Grip these! Right here. Tight, Ella! Keep your palms under the straps,” Bucky ordered sharply as he put Ella’s hands to the gun harness that encircled his shoulders and chest. It was strong enough for him to dangle his weight from, so Ella would be no problem. Seeing the zombies breaking through, she did as she was told, and buried her face against his chest. Bucky scaled the facade quickly as Steve fell freely to the base of the crown, and then again to the first setback.   
  
Bucky was in no way a fan of heights for obvious reasons. He always fell back upon his programming when he needed to deal with any substantial climb or drop, tucking away the corner of his mind that went mute and numb with terror. This time was much harder. Although he didn’t look down (never down at the ground, always gauge by the horizon), there was always a palpable shift in the air around you when you reached a sharp dropoff. The pressure, the change of sound and temperature, the sharper gusts, even the smell; the human body sensed all of it whether your eyes were closed or not.   
  
“Oh God, oh God, oh God… Bucky… I… can’t...” Ella felt it and began to violently shake as she sobbed against Bucky’s chest, and the crackling hiccups between her words made it impossible for him to retreat completely into his programming. He shifted Ella slightly to have a better grip upon her as his eyes tracked the advancing horde.  
  
“I know. Me too,” he rasped, forcing the words past the sudden dryness in his throat. “Just a short drop first. No big deal.”  
  
Ella's strangled scream was instantaneous the moment Bucky stepped backward off the facade. They were halfway down the crown before Bucky realized he was murmuring soothing encouragements to Ella. He told her how great she was doing while remembering how he used to whisper the same sentiments to Steve through some of his worst illnesses.   
  
When they reached the base of the crown, Bucky risked a moment to wrap his arms around Ella and whisper a few proud words into her ear as he held her tightly. She wasn’t talking anymore, just hiccups that were bordered upon hyperventilation. He had to shut that down immediately otherwise she’d faint on the next drop. If he’d had a way to tie her snugly to his body, it wouldn’t be an issue, but with one cable and no harnesses he couldn’t afford to have her go limp.  
  
“Breathe,” he instructed gently. “Deep, slow breaths. You can do it. Match my breathing.”  
  
She wasn’t hearing him. She kept her face hidden against his chest, which was good, but she’d zoned him out, which was bad. He kept trying to get her back with him as he hit the remote hooked to his belt. He felt the tension on the cable give, but then it caught again. Bucky looked up as he gave it another yank, but saw what it was caught on too late to stop the resulting action.   
  
The anchor had caught in the clothing of one of the hissers. The jerk Bucky gave the cable pulled said hisser over the edge of the facade. Under better circumstances, Bucky could have knocked the body mostly away with his arm. A bit like macabre baseball, except that would take the anchor down with the body. Bucky had no choice but to crowd Ella into the vee of the facade and let the creature hit the ledge they were on. The sound was sickening, and Ella startled wildly before her knees gave out and she crumpled. Bucky sighed heavily into her hair and eased her down to the concrete. Just as well, he supposed; this was… well it was disgusting and it reeked. Better that she didn’t see it, but he had to move fast. Collapsing building aside, it was unlikely she’d be out more than a minute or two, and Bucky did _not_ want her rousing to the sight of a small ledge and no sense of protection.  
  
He gave the mangled body a sharp nudge with his foot once he’d pulled his anchor free of its jacket. Steve would have seen the hisser fall. He’d definitely see the hisser’s body coming at him if a gust didn’t alter its trajectory. He wasn’t worried; Steve would deal with sending the body further along if necessary… though he was definitely going to owe his best friend a huge one considering what the body would do when it hit concrete a second time. He hoped Steve got far enough away.   
  
Steve liked Thai food. Maybe he’d order in a shitload of it for Steve when they got back. Thai food and old movies.  
  
As he reset his cable anchor, Bucky pondered what dishes best conveyed feeling truly shitty about accidentally splattering one’s bestest buddy with zombie guts while escaping the skyscraper you accidentally caused to collapse.

At the rate Bucky was going tonight, he was just gonna end up having to buy Steve his own fucking Thai restaurant.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shaish did an adorable sketch for the guardrail scene in this chapter. THANK YOU!!! Check it out here:  
> https://31.media.tumblr.com/6f4b42cff1bdec056017a7e4de906c87/tumblr_ne2rdpvAs91rs7wqyo2_500.jpg
> 
> For those that don't know, "setbacks" are the terraced sections of the tower that make it gradually taper upward. There's several reasons besides aesthetics, one of which is helping cities maintain views of the sky.
> 
> Aerial shot of the US Bank Tower for a better view of all the setbacks: 
> 
>  


	6. "I like just bein’ stupid with you.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dangling 50 stories up might not be the best place to have a memory resurface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--Falling zombies... Stuff falling in general. Not all of it literal, though. *cough*

There may have been a splattering sound. There may have been a disgusted grunt that followed it. Or it might have been a bit of Bucky's imagination in overdrive. Either way, he had to get Ella up and get moving. The urgency of his actions as he patted Ella's face was underscored by another rumble from the tower and a small cloud of dust. 

"Okay Ella, enough beauty sleep," he teased as her eyes fluttered. "We gotta go. Up with ya."

He pulled her upright before she was fully with it, but she did latch onto his jacket. She tried to look past Bucky, but he was ready for it and angled his body to block her view. No need to get a fresh look at where they were. She was still discombobulated when the next body grazed the edge of the facade. Ella tensed, but only tightened her hold on Bucky as she pressed her forehead to his chest.

Bucky looked up and groaned that they still couldn't seem to catch a break. The hissers were leaning off the top of the facade, reaching toward them with flailing arms. The crush of bodies was causing the mass of them to literally overflow from the rooftop and fall. 

As if rappelling down to each level with an acrophobic civilian wasn't going to be challenging enough, now there were human-sized projectiles to dodge as well.

"Really...?" Bucky huffed. He wanted to complain more, used to Steve being there to chuckle or outright laugh at his acerbic remarks, but Ella was as tightly wound as they came just then. Best to just bite his tongue and get on with it.

"Okay," he sighed, "I could do this a lot faster if I could use both hands."

Ella looked like she might throw up. Under the circumstances, Bucky couldn't really blame her but he really needed her to try to push through it. 

"I just need you to hold onto the straps like you just did, but use your legs too. It'd be easier to have you on my back, but I'll compromise with you on that one since I know you wouldn't feel secure like that."

Ella started shaking again, but she surprised him with a healthy dose of sarcasm in her response.

"Well at least I know you're not trying to put the moves on me, right?"

Bucky actually laughed at that as he gave her back a reassuring pat then lifted her. "My moves are much better than this, Ella... or they were anyway… and for the record? I like dames just fine."

Her expression was exactly what Bucky wanted to see. Anything was better than pure terror at this point, even if it was nosy intrigue.

“But… I thought-”

“No, I’m not gay,” he smirked. “Even if I was, one look at my wardrobe and I’d be outta the club.”

Ella adjusted her grip on his shoulder harness as she studiously tried to ignore that he’d started backing up toward the ledge. “You’re Bucky Barnes. I don’t think anyone cares how a hero dresses other than to emulate them.”

“Yeah well… tell that to Junior the next time he throws a fund raiser,” Bucky quipped. He noticed Ella eyeing him with a sort of taken-aback wonder. 

"Don't look so shocked. I was quite the ladies’ man before the war."

"Really?" she asked, her voice only trembling slightly. 

"Yep," he answered with a cocky grin. "I was a charmer an' then some."

"Yeah, that didn't come across at all before," Ella gritted through clenched teeth as Bucky reached the edge and cast a wary eye toward the roof.

"Sorry,” he apologized, though it was wildly insincere, “my charm runs thin during a mission nowadays, and I’m not at all happy with Fury for sending us without telling us everything.”

“I don’t think he knew enough to prepare you for this,” Ella muttered, again trying to duck her face as close to Bucky’s neck as possible.

“Oh I guarantee you he probably knew more than _you_ did by the time he called us in… and he’s gonna have my foot up his ass for it when we get back,” Bucky swore under his breath. “Okay… Close your eyes and hold on.”

Ella’s legs tightened around Bucky’s waist and she plastered herself to his chest. “Damn it,” she whimpered as Bucky stepped off. They fell freely for half the distance to the next setback. Ella did better this time, only making a few noises and holding on for dear life. If she'd held on any tighter, Bucky might’ve started fearing for his circulation. He was proud of her though. He’d taken more beatings than he could count when HYDRA handlers tried to condition him to tolerating heights right after he fell. The Russians couldn’t have cared less about it, but HYDRA wanted no weaknesses. Anything perceived as such earned him the worst brutality they had to offer.

“You’re doing just fine,” Bucky reassured her even as he grabbed her around the waist to jerk them sideways. She let out a startled yelp at the sudden motion, but kept her eyes shut so she didn’t see the body fall past them.

“Hey this is like that game from the 80’s… with that little uh frog…?”

“Frogger?” Ella yelled incredulously.

“Yeah, that,” Bucky laughed as he knocked another body off its trajectory with his left arm. Tony had given them an Atari as a joke. It had backfired terribly when they'd dug up every working Atari cartridge they could find. They were rarely seen over the next two months. Maybe they could pull that back out to play while they gorged themselves on that Thai food. 

“Jesus, Bucky,” she growled past a clenched jaw, “Not even funny.”

“Aw it is a little,” he grinned, watching cautiously upward until a hand pushed against his back and Steve’s voice was just beneath them.

“Is he telling those awful jokes again?”

“He just compared dodging falling bodies to Frogger,” Ella frowned. She put her feet back down and tried not to let her eyes wander as she stepped back from the ledge. She shook her hands out and leaned over to suck the night air into her lungs.

“Okay better than his jokes then,” Steve chuckled, keeping a close eye on the air above them and Ella’s position on the terrace.

“Oh sure, Stevie,” Bucky mumbled tightly as he shifted sideways to avoid another falling hisser. Steve barely moved. “Just conveniently ignore the fact that most of the jokes I have now, I heard from you first.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Steve answered blithely as he quickly shoved the spasming body over the side. "We should drag the Atari out when we get home though. I feel like kicking your ass on the ice course again." There was a small, rigid safety fence around the perimeter of the setback, but Steve had already ripped it free to clear their path for the next descent. Of the next three drops, it would be the trickiest since it wasn’t a straight descent. They were going to have to swing out and to their left to hit the next terraced level.

“Well I don't remember anything about you beating me at ice racing,” Bucky grinned faintly back at him. He hit the remote on his cable and pulled it free of the level above. As he retracted it, he saw Steve gently push Ella’s back against the side of the building. With the power out and only emergency lighting on, the mirrored glass window behind her was mostly opaque, but Bucky’s eyes detected movement behind it anyway. A lot of movement, and none of the motions were the kind one would see from beings still in their right mind. He knew Steve had an even better view of it than he did, and Bucky was glad his partner didn’t mention it. Ella didn’t need to know that there was only a double paned sheet of glass between her back and a horde of hissers. It was bulletproof, but that wouldn’t make her feel any better. Not being able to see them would probably make it even more disturbing. As it was, the sound of their bloodied hands smudging against the other side of that glass was already grating upon Bucky’s nerves as he shot his cable into the concrete.

This time, Steve mimicked his action and hooked the cable into his belt. When he caught Bucky’s eye, he grinned at them both then winked at Ella. “Can’t go giving the old man a heart attack.”

“Says the punk not even two years younger than me,” Bucky fired back as he gestured Ella forward. Steve laughed as he edged himself over the side.

“You’re doing great, Ella,” he called. “I’ll have the fencing ripped up again by the time you’re down.” He gave them a quirky little salute then disappeared. Bucky just sighed and shook his head.

“Ready?”

“Not really,” Ella huffed, but she took a deep breath and grabbed onto his harness again. As he lifted her, Bucky perused the dusty corners of his brain for other absurdities to distract her with. The last one had worked better than he’d hoped. As he listened for the faint sound of Steve dispatching the safety fencing, he eyed the crescent gouge in the cement where Steve had broken the force of his landing with his shield. Every time the building shuddered, the blood pooling inside the groove shimmered gruesomely in the moonlight. He realized that he’d neglected to apologize to Steve when they’d landed just now, though he hadn’t looked to see how badly Steve had gotten splattered. 

He voiced his oversight to Ella as he lifted her again and stepped backward off the ledge.

Her sputtering of random words was pretty amusing, and it distracted him from his discomfort almost as much as it did Ella. The shift to the side was anything but fun as he slightly miscalculated how hard he’d needed to push off from the opposing wall. Had Steve not been there to catch the back of Bucky’s jacket, he and Ella would have swung back and slammed into the side of the building. Definitely not something that would have helped Ella’s nerves at all. Thankfully she was unaware of his gaffe, and Steve said nothing to enlighten her. Bucky just gave a grateful squeeze to the back of Steve’s neck once his feet were solid again.

“Thanks pal,” he murmured softly as Ella automatically let go of him and pressed back to the building, falling into a helpful routine without their guidance. Bucky certainly appreciated it and could tell Steve did too. 

“I heard you laying into him all the way down here,” Steve chuckled. “What’d he say this time?”

“Your boyfriend said he was remiss in apologizing to you for splattering you with zombie guts up there,” Ella answered with forced nonchalance.

Bucky only froze for the extended breath it took for Steve to laugh. “Oh yeah…? Hopefully it’s better than his apology for accidentally leveling a five story building down around us two months ago.”

“Four stories,” Bucky grumbled, though he didn’t put much grouch behind it as he retracted and reset his cable. He couldn’t help but fixate upon how Steve hadn’t corrected her or reacted awkwardly.

“Nope, five. I know it was five because I was pulled into six different review hearings along with Tony and Nick over it. Definitely. Five.”

“And it’ll be at least that many years before I stop hearing about it,” Bucky retorted, his nose crinkled in annoyance. Slightly sheepish annoyance, but annoyance nonetheless. He did have a prickly front to maintain afterall.

“Oooh nooo,” Steve replied a little too gleefully, “I’m not gonna let that one go ever. I don’t know how long it’ll take us to get old and grey, but that one’s sticking for the long haul, Buck.”

“Joy,” Bucky grunted, but at least when he looked over at Ella there was a soft smirk upon her face. A brownie point to Stevie this round. Maybe two for making his stomach do that fluttery thing again at the mention of being ridiculous old men together someday. 

He gestured again for Ella as he noticed Steve wasn’t setting a cable. He raised his brows meaningfully.

“What about my fragile old heart?”

“Your heart can take another short one. Besides, it’s only four floors.”

“Five.”

“Oh,” Steve blinked back at him innocently, “I thought you couldn’t tell the difference between four and five.”

“Really, Steve? Still on that?” Bucky rolled his eyes almost hard enough to give himself a headache. 

“Ooh yeah,” Steve giggled that high-pitched chortle that Bucky really wanted to be able to hate, then dropped to the next setback.

“Can we please just get this over with,” Ella groaned into the crook of Bucky’s shoulder. He gave her back a brisk rub as she wrapped her legs around him again.

“Sure thing,” he answered lightly as though they were just hopping out to go grocery shopping.

Luckily the zombies hadn’t adjusted their position on the roof, so they were still falling in the same zone. No dodging necessary, though Bucky desperately wanted to clean his arm off. The blood was no danger to the metal, but that didn’t make him any more at ease with it being there. It was a small trigger, but one he was still struggling with. Countless times he’d returned to his handlers with blood all but dripping from that arm, and their means of removing it was in no way pleasant. Adding it to the discomfort he was silently battling over the height was starting to whittle away at him. He already hated the tower, the city, and the mission in general, so every little new thing they had to tackle was raising the pressure behind his eyes more and more.

As Steve said, it wasn’t a long drop. It was the same as the first setback, but Bucky still tried to focus upon other things as he brought them down as swiftly as he could safely manage. He felt ridiculous, being so ill-at-ease with something he’d successfully done a thousand times before. Then again, even as he kept telling Ella she needed to find a way through it, he was telling her that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the same breath. 

Bucky never was all that great at taking his own advice though.

Steve would be losing his shit and going full-on mother hen over Bucky if he knew that Bucky was having this much of a problem. That wasn’t what Bucky needed though. He needed to get this done. Nineteen days was the longest he’d ever needed to complete a mission. That one required him to do actual undercover work, yet this one was already feeling longer than that in far too many ways. The sooner he was behind the yoke of Junior’s private jet, the better.

The building gave another rolling groan, and a chunk of glass from the crown façade fell past them. 

Scratch that; the sooner he was home, in sweats, surrounded by Thai food and Steve, the happier he’d instantly be.

“We’re gonna die on this stupid building,” Ella breathed, her hard-won determination backsliding.

“Not on our watch,” he answered resolutely and dropped them a bit faster.

When they reached the smallest of the setbacks, Steve gave Bucky a critical once over. Ella had immediately let herself down and was crouching next to the side of the tower with her face in her hands. Bucky zoned out from Steve methodically patting him down for injuries as he watched her. He came back when Steve cupped his face and forced Bucky to meet his eyes.

“Hey you… there you are.” Steve gave him a gentle smile, but deep concern was rolling off him in tangible waves. “What happened, Buck? Did that almost hit you?”

“Felt a lot closer than it actually was,” Bucky lied, acutely aware of Ella’s state of mind. 

“Okay, where’d you go just now,” Steve asked, taking his cue from Bucky and lowering his voice as his eyes roamed Bucky’s face. “You haven’t checked out during an op in months, pal.”

“Wasn’t really zoned out,” Bucky lied again, hating himself for it but knowing it was necessary. “Was thinking about what I could say on the next drop to jerk her out of the headspace she’s in.”

“You sure?” Steve was surprised by his answer, but if he suspected anything was amiss, he didn’t seem ready to push it too far. “I thought maybe the height was bothering you again… or the blood your arm…”

Bucky felt himself go a little fuzzy between the ears as his gaze snapped up to Steve. Yes, Steve knew about his aversion to having blood caked on him, but Bucky really thought he’d hidden his problem with hanging off the side of steep shit…

“C’mon, Buck, don’t look at me like that. I’m not blind, as much as you seem to wish I was. Let’s just get off this damn building and then we’re gonna sit down and talk about a few things, okay? I’m not that frail kid anymore. You can lean on me.”

“I do lean on you.” Bucky wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to smack him. He was just so damned endearing when he got this way.

“Yeah well I can take a lot more weight than you’re giving me,” Steve shrugged as he shot his anchor into the side of the building just beneath them. “‘Til the end of the line, pal,” he smiled and reached out to ruffle Bucky’s hair.

“Yeah,” Bucky choked past his dry throat. “Yeah… end of the line.” He jerked his head toward Ella as he set his own cable. “She’s a bit shocked and disappointed that I don’t have an aversion to gals so uh… probably’ll use that to rile her up for this. She does better pissed off.”

Bucky looked up just in time to see Steve’s face contort into something that looked suspiciously like pain. Then disappointment. Why? Alarms instantly went off in his head. What had he said?

“Steve?”

“Yeah uh… okay. Whatever you think’ll work,” Steve muttered as he walked over to Ella and pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Hey… I’ll see you down there, okay? We’re doing real good, Ella.”

She nodded silently to him and stood up. Steve was walking with purpose toward the ledge, but Bucky grabbed his arm.

“Steve, hey-” Shit, did he just imagine that Steve winced at his touch? What the hell had he just missed?

“We’ve got bottled water in the SUV. We can rinse your arm off once we’re clear,” Steve muttered distractedly.

“Stevie-” That flinch. He hadn’t imagined it. Why would Steve flinch at Bucky’s pet name for him? “I’m fine, pal.”

Another, more pronounced winch as Steve pulled his arm free of Bucky’s grip.

“Yeah, of course you are.”

“Hey, what the fuck did I just miss?” Bucky queried him, mystified by the sudden change from Steve of all people. He hadn’t seen this kind of moodiness since they were teenagers.

“Nuthin',” Steve answered with a forced smile. “Nuthin’ at all. Don’t worry about it. See ya down there.”

The fact that Steve’s Brooklyn was seeping back into his accent told Bucky it was not nothing.

“Ella come on,” Bucky called. He wasn’t going to wait for Steve this time; he could clear the fence while Bucky retracted his cable from its current position. As much as Bucky hated this during an op, he wasn’t about to let Steve’s mood fester into something worse.

 

***********************************************************

 

_Bucky blinked at the light still being on so late. Steve had given him the slip at the dance hall again, but he didn’t expect him to still be awake. Usually when he took off, it was to come home, have some of their cheap beer and pass out. There wasn’t much to Steve so it never took much alcohol to put him down for the count. The beer Bucky usually won in poker games down at the docks wasn’t much in the way of taste, but it did pack a punch, so Steve rarely finished one by himself._

_Bucky went to their kitchenette to look for the leftover, and was surprised to not see any of them opened. He looked over his shoulder and was even more surprised to see Steve sketching wildly in his book. His face was as stormy as the weather gearing up outside, but there were no telltale bruises or scrapes to indicate that he’d been in any fight. Hell, the fact that he was still upright and sketching was proof there’d been no altercations._

_Sketching angrily. Very angrily._

_“Ducked out on me again, punk,” Bucky tested, pulling the sweat-damp tie from his shirt collar._

_“Yeah.”_

_“Didn’t expect ya to still be up…”_

_“Hmm.”_

_The noncommittal hum was enough of a warning flag to make Bucky pause halfway to the couch and look up warily. His fingers stilled at the third button of his shirt._

_“Whatcha workin’ on? You’re makin’ some pretty fierce strokes over there.”_

_“Don’t worry about it.”_

_Steve’s refusal to look up at him told him Steve’s ire was definitely directed at him, but Bucky wasn’t sure why. Normally Steve’s eyes would dart up to follow him around their apartment when Bucky came home from work. Those sharp, blue eyes would catalogue everything about him in those glances; whether he’d stopped for a drink with the boys… if he’d had a rougher than usual day… if his back was bothering him, or his left knee… whether their landlady had harassed him in the hallway below their floor. Basically anything and everything. Bucky wasn’t sure how he did it, but he’d given up bothering to hide anything significant from Steve._

_Mostly._

_Bucky ran his hand over his hair and flopped down on the couch. Steve pulled his feet back just in time to keep them from being sat upon. Bucky lifted them and put them into his lap, only to have Steve frown and pull them back again._

_“Okay… what’d I do to piss ya off so bad?”_

_Steve’s eyes stayed glued to his sketchbook. His favorite. The one Bucky got him for his birthday._

_“Nuthin'.”_

_“Uh huh,” Bucky smirked knowingly. “Okay… why are you pissed?”_

_“I’m not. I’m just sketching.”_

_“Like hell, Steve,” he half laughed. “Out with it.”_

_“Jesus, just go to bed, Bucky,” Steve gritted, the swear far more blasphemous than the scrawny kid was usually comfortable with._

_“Not until you talk to me. How can I fix this is if I don’t know what I did?” Bucky exclaimed, throwing his hands upward helplessly. “‘M not drunk so it’s not like we can’t hash this out right now.”_

_“Nuthin' to hash out,” Steve scowled darkly. “It’s only 2:30. Did Nancy ditch ya, or did she put out that quick?”_

_Bucky’s eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling. That was crude, terribly crude for Steve. He was fiercely protective of girls’ reputations and dignity. “What…? Since when do you talk like that about a dame? Where the hell did that come from?”_

_If Steve felt ashamed of what he’d said, he was determined not to show it, probably just to spite Bucky._

_“Nothing! You didn’t do anything! That’s just it! You’re just being you!”_

_Staring at Steve like he’d sprouted a second head, Bucky blinked slowly at him. “Is that a problem suddenly…? Me just being me?”_

_“Yes!” Steve shouted, then almost instantly deflated. “I mean… no! Not… Fuck I don’t know!”_

_Bucky’s brows rose even higher at this strange creature on the couch that looked like his Steve, but wasn’t acting like Steve. Except he sorta was… in a weird way._

_“You’re just being you… so I don’t know why I’m mad at you. I really don’t. I just… am.” He threw his book and pencil to the floor and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes. The charcoal smudged his eyelids and gave Bucky’s brain a startling place to go. He couldn’t look away as Steve sighed and lowered his voice._

_“Look, just forget it, okay? Go to bed and I’ll be in a better mood in the morning.”_

_Bucky chewed at his bottom lip. “Do ya not wanna go with me to the dance hall anymore?”_

_Steve raised his arm enough to prop his chin to his knuckles. “I don’t know why you want me to go, Buck. It’s not like I do anything when I’m there. I’m just a lump on a stool.”_

_“Because ya won’t let me teach ya how to dance, buddy,” Bucky defended. “If you did, you’d probably have a lot more fun there.”_

_“Why does it matter?” Steve asked. “It’s not like you’re not having fun regardless.”_

_Bucky shook his head and shrugged, his eyes bugging as he failed to understand why this was being questioned. “Because you’re my best friend and I want you to have a good time…? What kind of question is that, Steve? Yeah, I’m having fun… I just like to go be in that atmosphere sometimes. Everyone’s sweaty and warm an’ smiling. Nobody’s thinkin’ about what bills they still gotta figure out how to pay… You’re not sick and you’re not getting into fights… It just feels good. I wish you could let go enough to feel it too. Just let me teach ya a few moves, Stevie-”_

_“I feel stupid enough just being there, Bucky,” Steve frowned, cutting Bucky’s pleas short._

_“Nah you don’t… Stupid’s more my area, remember?”_

_The levity fell a little flat, but Bucky saw the little cracks forming in the way Steve’s voice softened. “You’re not stupid.”_

_“Well my grades said I wasn’t, but around you…? Dunno, punk. I do some seriously stupid shit around you. Not even sure why.” He rolled his head over to smile sheepishly at Steve. “Guess I just like ya taking care of me once in a while.”_

_“I always will,” Steve blinked back at him, obviously caught off guard by the admission. “God, Bucky, you take care of me all the time. Why wouldn’t I do the same?” Rolling his neck wearily, Steve closed his eyes and dipped his head in contrition._

_“Look, Bucky… I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me tonight. I don’t want you to not go have fun with the girls-”_

_“It’s not that,” Bucky quickly corrected him. Steve opened his eyes and stared blankly at him._

_No, not blankly. There was something there, searching Bucky’s face again._

_“It’s not that at all,” he continued, averting his eyes from Steve’s. “I mean, yeah… the dames are fun an’ all… but they’re not why I go. It’s just the whole place and the dancing… the not caring or worrying while the music’s going full speed ahead… Guess I’m selfish but I just like having you there with me.”_

_No words left Steve’s slightly gaped mouth, and Bucky started to fear that he’d said way more than he should have. He fumbled for words he didn’t have, and the ones that did come were woefully wrong._

_“I mean I guess we’re gonna haveta find a gal to settle down with eventually… that’s what we’re supposed to do right? The whole order of things…?”_

_Steve’s expression immediately closed off, along with the gape in his jaw. “Yeah sure,” he muttered. “That just what guys do.”_

_“Right,” Bucky nodded slowly, knowing he’d just made something worse without knowing the how or why. All he knew was that his guts were churning at the thought of settling down and giving up what he had right here, meager as it was._

_“That’s way off though,” he muttered back at Steve. “Way off. As off as I can get away with. Don’t really see myself cartin’ kids around. My sister and brother were enough, ya know…? Anyways… I don’t much care about that. I’m happy with where I’m at now. I like my life the way it is. More money’d be nice. An apartment that doesn’t damn near kill you in the winter’d be nice too… but I don’t have any big designs on anything else, Steve. I like just bein’ stupid with you.”_

_His expression had grown somewhat wistful, but when Steve finally spoke, he dodged the mess of sentiment Bucky had thrown down upon his lap._

_“I’m not stupid though.”_

_The corner of Bucky’s mouth curved upward until his teeth were flashing at Steve. He lurched sideways and grabbed a handful of Steve’s angel-fine hair and gave it a tug._

_“You are so fucking stupid it’s pitiful, Steven Grant Rogers. So. Fucking. Stupid.”_

_“If I am it’s from being around you,” he countered, pulling free of Bucky’s grip. “Can I actually go to sleep now? You’re fuckin’ keeping me up.”_

_“You?! I’d be face down in a feather pillow already if you weren’t all up in a damn mood when I got home!”_

_Before Steve could respond in kind, Bucky was off the couch and had driven his shoulder into Steve’s gut. He lifted Steve off the ground just enough to push him backward into their bedroom, and promptly deposited him bodily onto his bed. The wind left his lungs in a hard woof of air, but he still managed to glare up at Bucky for it. Bucky was having none of it though. He glared right back as he poked a finger into Steve’s chest._

_“No more of this,” he said sternly. “No more sulking. You’re damn lucky to be alive after this past winter and I’m not gonna let you watch life pass you by. We’re gonna have fun. We’re gonna enjoy our life because it’s the one we’ve worked hard to earn. You an’ me, pal. I’m gonna teach ya to loosen up and have a good time if it’s the last thing I do. Got it?”_

_Steve’s azure eyes were wide as he stared up at Bucky. “Yeah… okay, Buck.”_

_“Good,” Bucky huffed, then scrubbed his face. He walked over to his own bed and face-planted into the pillow, despite reeking of smoke and sweat. “‘Night.”_

_He didn’t remember falling asleep, but somehow he woke up the next morning stripped of everything but his briefs. It was pissing down rain outside, but the smell of strong, black coffee and oatmeal made him feel like everything was right with the world again._

_As right as it could be with Steve making him breakfast rather than curled against him anyway._

 

***************************************************************

“Bucky…? Bucky!”

Breathing. He had to get it under control.

Except it wasn’t Ella that was hyperventilating. It was him.

The memory had come out of nowhere and left him reeling even as his body still went through the motions of the descent. His chest was heaving. Two and a half stories below them, Steve was calling out to him. Bucky didn’t have to hear him clearly to know he was frantic and wondering why they weren’t moving. He only vaguely remembered stopping as the memory washed over him.

Ella was in tears and shaking him. “Bucky, please. You’re scaring the shit out of me. Count like you told me to. We can’t just hang here. I don’t know how long I can stay like this…”

Bucky wanted to be sick but he remembered the process Sam Wilson gave him to bring himself out of a panic attack. He started mentally checking off the list of things to think about, and the blackness causing his vision to tunnel began to recede. He wrapped an arm around Ella, as much to ground himself as her, and pressed his forehead to the crown of her head.

“Sorry,” he mumbled when he could finally take a proper breath, “a memory… came back.”

“Okay,” Ella nodded, trying desperately to keep her voice calm. “It’s okay… just get us down, alright?”

“Yeah. Got it.” He didn’t entirely, but it didn’t matter. He’d done this enough times that his body would finish on semi-autopilot. 

Bucky frowned upward when he realized the cable wasn’t feeding properly from its anchor. He gave it a gentle jerk, then a firmer one when it didn’t budge.

“It’s caught on something, Bucky,” Ella explained. Clearly he’d been more on autopilot than he realized. “We’ve been dangling here swinging back and forth for a few minutes, and now its caught somewhere on the side of the building.”

“Fuck my life,” Bucky groaned. 

“God, I really did not want to hear that from you,” Ella sniffled against his neck. “Just get us down. Please.”

Bucky looked around them and up at the cable again. Steve had stopped yelling, seeing that Bucky was alert and aware again. Bucky glanced down at him and wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t quite vertigo, but he knew the wind shouldn’t feel as frigid as it suddenly did either.

“You have to let go.”

“What?!”

“You have to let go. Steve can catch you.”

Ella shook her head frantically. “No way. I can’t. There’s no way I can do that.”

“I know, Ella, but you have to. There’s no other option. I can get you down another ten feet at most, but that’s it. You gotta trust us on this.” He eased them down that much more as he allowed the slack he held to slide through his left hand. He attached the clip hold to his belt then gently began to pull Ella’s hands free of his harness.

She took over his earlier hyperventilating, only able to repeat one word, but she at least had enough presence of mind not to fight him the way she had on the rooftop. The one word of desperation gave way to heavy sobbing as he lowered her as far as he could with his right arm.

“Ella, look at me-”

“Don’t,” she pleaded, now paralyzed with terror. “Don’t drop me. Please don’t do it. Bucky, please.”

“Hey, look at me… Listen, Ella. When I let go, try to curl yourself into a ball. Okay? I’m gonna count to three,” he told her, keeping his voice as gentle as he could while he ignored her nearly incoherent begging.

“One,” he called, then let go of her hand. He would likely have nightmares about her scream for a long time, but true to Bucky’s word, Steve was there. It wasn’t a perfect Captain America move, but Steve’s rapid gestures up to him after he’d set Ella down made it clear that she was physically unharmed. Mentally scarred for life probably, but the point was that she’d eventually be okay.

Bucky took a deep breath and yanked the cable as he thumbed the release on the anchor remote. It worked to free the cable, but it also sent him careening down in a wild spiral. He hit the setback hard and the momentum rolled him over the edge. His left hand clamped down on the concrete, but the material was quickly crumbling as the gears in his fingers whined to lock onto something solid. 

Bucky screamed Steve’s name, certain that his fate was to fall again, but this time Steve was there. His shield slammed into the concrete to anchor his weight as he grabbed Bucky’s right wrist. 

“Climb, Buck,” he ordered, and Bucky instantly obeyed. It was the instinct of following an order, but it was also his instinct for self-preservation finally coming back after years of HYDRA trying to destroy it. 

Steve grunted loudly as Bucky got himself back onto the ledge. He sat down roughly and yanked his shield free as Bucky rolled onto his back and fought off the wave of nausea that hit him. He felt like he was literally freezing until Steve reached over and gripped his right hand, warming Bucky’s flesh with his own.

“Breathe, Buck,” he whispered. “You’re not there. You’re here with me and you’re okay. I caught ya this time... We're okay...”

Bucky panted until he managed to suck enough air into his lungs that he stopped feeling dizzy. Looking up and seeing the 68th floor on fire also did wonders for clearing his head. When he sat up, Steve’s hands were all over him, pressing firmly against his uniform to give Bucky whatever grounding his touch could provide.

It was everything to Bucky in that moment.

“It’s going fast, Buck. You good?”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispered. “Solid.”

“Green?” Steve asked, using their color codes for the first time in months.

“Green,” he affirmed with a sharp nod. Steve gave his face a soft pat.

“Let’s get this done then, Sergeant.”

“After you, Cap. Blow us a good window.”

He watched Steve replace his shield onto his back, then pull his Sig Sauer. Bucky’s hand shot out to halt him. He withdrew a gun of his own and held it out to Steve. The Sig’s ammo would barely pock the bulletproof windows, but his would take them out cleanly. Steve didn’t question the offer; he took the sidearm and touched his temple in silent salute before picking up his already-anchored cable.

As soon as Steve disappeared over the side, Bucky approached Ella.

He expected something along the lines of the punch she delivered to his jaw, but didn’t try to block it. Instead he pulled Ella into a tight hug and apologized into her hair. He'd want to slug someone too if they'd done the same to him, likely much worse.

“You’re an asshole,” she muttered, her cheek pressed to his chest.

“I’ve told Stevie as much, many times,” Bucky answered quietly. He was only half there with Ella though. Part of his mind was still fractured off and replaying the memory, picking apart every word and expression. He’d been too young and oblivious to read between the lines of what Steve said, and what he’d shown. Now though… Now a part of Bucky was internally screaming because the more he poured over the memory of that argument with Steve, the more he circled back to the same shocking revelation.

Ella might actually be right. Steve might have been there on the same page with Bucky all along, and Bucky had just been too stupidly blind to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I received some anonymous criticism of Ella's behaviour in the last chapter. The main criticism was that Ella had been suddenly turned into a "weak" character. I'm sorry some of you felt that way about her reactions, however I don't see anything weak about it. She has a very real and sometimes debilitating phobia. I have acrophobia, and Ella's reactions to having to go over the side with Bucky are way better than my own would be. I literally freeze up. My knees go numb just driving the overpasses that are all over the place here in California. I will actually detour around them when I can because they make me sick to my stomach to even look at them. I have nightmares about driving off the damn things.
> 
> So anyway, I don't agree that Ella is being weak here. She's written as a normal person with a condition that truly sucks ass in the worst way. She's doing her best to deal with things even Steve and Bucky are struggling with at times. I hope you'll see that a bit better in this chapter.


	7. "No."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting clear of the tower wasn't the only problem, but the personal realizations continue to fall into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve gets the chapter title this time in honor of him RIPPING A FUCKING LOG IN HALF. If you don't know what I'm referring to, be glad. It's a life ruiner, and a major fucking distraction, even while it was hugely inspirational to a section of this chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> _I'm a Bucky girl... I'm a Bucky girl... I'm a Bucky girl..._

_Blow us a good window._  
  
Steve was definitely going to do that, however his definition would likely differ quite a bit from Bucky’s. It couldn’t be helped though; there was so much tension and emotion built up inside Steve that if he didn’t take it out on a few hapless zombies, it would erupt in a way that he couldn’t afford at all.  
  
The image of Bucky dangling inert while in glassy-eyed shock was bad enough to deal with, but watching Bucky’s body freefall then topple off the building…? It was eating at Steve in a way that was making him physically sick to his stomach. The pressure in his chest was suffocating him every time the memory looped. He’d reached Bucky this time, and that had lightened something inside Steve, but the terror he’d felt right up to the second when his palm had pressed over the skin of Bucky’s wrist wasn’t releasing its hold upon him. His fingers still ached from gripping Bucky tight enough to feel his bones grinding together. When Bucky had reached up so quickly and latched onto his thigh with those metal digits, Steve had welcomed the excruciating pain. Bucky usually had such fine-tuned control of his prosthetic arm and hand that he could pick up a sewing needle from a tile floor. He was also an expert in hiding his emotions, so when he’d screamed Steve’s name, and had nearly broken Steve’s leg with that desperately out-of-control grip, Steve had nearly come apart right then and there. His best friend, who had been adamantly proclaiming his need to not be so dependent upon Steve, had called out for him more instinctively than he ever had before. The Bucky Barnes of ’44 hadn’t been able to do it, too consumed with getting past what Zola did to him, and proving he was worthy enough and well enough to stand at Captain America’s side in battle.  
  
Bucky circa 1944 was all stiff upper lip, even in private, so hearing that plea come from him in spite of having partially fallen back into Winter Soldier mode had caused a tectonic shift. Steve knew Bucky felt it too, but he also instinctively knew that they needed to sort that out independently first. They might never talk about it, but the need to process was imperative.  
  
So Steve was going to intentionally pick a window with a lot of bloody hand prints, and _process things._  
  
A sizable pile of zombie parts later, he’d feel right as rain and ready to breathe Bucky’s air again. He’d be able to stand beside his best friend without developing verbal diarrhea, confessing his undying love, tangling his fingers into those dangerously alluring tresses, and kissing Bucky into next year… crumbling building and bystander civilian be damned.  
  
So when Steve dropped down as far as his cable allowed, he eyed each of the mirrored windows critically. His gaze rested upon a particular window just to his left. Grasping his shield, Steve pulled Bucky’s gun, pushed away from the building hard, then cracked a menacing grin as he shot out the window and crashed through the leftover shards.  
  
  
**********************************************************************************  
  
When Bucky dropped himself and Ella to the chosen window, he’d expected the “all clear” tap in his comm to mean clear of mostly everything. He did not expect to see Steve standing amid a sea of corpses, each of them either beheaded or bashed beyond recognition. After trying to wrap his brain around the last half hour of internal epiphanies, it was a bit more than Bucky was ready to cope with. They were definitely going to have to have a long, civil talk, but Bucky was in no state to do it right then.  
  
As Ella pressed herself against the hallway wall, shrinking back from the open window, Bucky stalked up to Steve and gave him a shove that nearly sat him on his ass.  
  
“‘The fuck did you do?” he growled, not even bothering to whisper. “Huh? What the fuck is all this?”  
  
“Free therapy,” Steve grinned, not allowing Bucky’s anger to diminish the obvious pleasure he’d taken in laying waste to a tangible thorn in their side.  
  
“Free…” Bucky sputtered the word and gave Steve another hard shove. “You fucking idiot, there’s gotta be at least twenty bodies here and all it takes is one lucky opening. The fuck were you thinking? You’re supposed to pick-”  
  
Bucky barely paused his rant as two hissers came at them from around the corner. He had his gun pulled and the two dropped with only a quick flick of his eyes in their direction.  
  
“-a fucking window that only had one or two, not a fucking football team!” He stared incredulously at the grin that refused to leave Steve’s mouth, then shoved him again.  
  
“The fuck is _wrong_ with you, Steve?”  
  
“Nothing now,” Steve answered without hesitation. “I feel good. Great actually.”  
  
Bucky recognized the endorphin rush that flushed Steve’s giddy cheeks. He’d been the happy recipient of that same rush many times at Steve’s side the past few months, and many of those times he’d nearly given Steve a heart attack in the process. Now he finally understood why Steve could never really enjoy it with him, because of the way he usually attained it with something that resulted in a lot of temporary stitches and hydrogen peroxide.  
  
“Did you not think what happened up there was enough fuckin’ drama? Think I needed to see this after coming out the other side of that?” A brutal hit to Steve’s chest, which barely fazed him physically. “I didn’t!”  
  
He jerked his fist upward again, but Steve grabbed it this time, holding it firmly between them.  
  
“Bucky… stop.” Steve spoke to him in such a gentle tone that Bucky instantly felt his ire disseminating. The infuriating grin was gone, and Steve’s expression was wide open. “I’m sorry but you aren’t the only one that came out the other side of that shaken and wound tighter than a Swiss watch. I needed to blow some steam, okay?”  
  
Bucky wanted so badly to stay pissed off at Steve, but that was far too exhausting. He needed them back in step with one another, especially now with the tower groaning and shaking ominously around them.  
  
“You’re a fuckin’ jerk.”  
  
“No, I’m a punk, remember?”  
  
Bucky growled his annoyance as Steve clapped his hand to the back of his neck and squeezed. “Leave it be, Buck. I knew what I was doing… and we gotta get back to it.”  
  
Giving a shallow bob of his head, Bucky half-heartedly punched Steve in the arm.  
  
“Fine. Stop bein’ a dick. That’s my job, not yours.”  
  
“Duly noted,” Steve murmured contritely. He winked at Bucky before he turned back to the window to reset his cable, and Bucky willed his body to stay put rather than lunging forward and pressing his lips to Steve’s. The need to tell Steve everything was making him literally hurt, but it was not the time or place. He had no grand designs for some epic proclamation, but he flat out refused to do it standing in a hallway of dispatched, reeking hissers.  
  
When Steve hooked his cable back into his belt, he looked up at Bucky and smiled.  
  
“Promise to be good this time, okay?”  
  
“You’d better, you jackass,” Bucky grunted at him before he dropped out of sight.  
  
The gruff sentiment had to be enough. They were running out of time and would be lucky to clear the building safely. At this point, Bucky was pretty sure they wouldn’t have time to reach the SUV and the extra equipment it contained. He had a feeling they’d be doing a lot more rough improvising for the rest of the mission.  
  
Ella was completely silent apart from desperate gasps against his throat when he stepped backward out the window. Before, they’d at least had a setback below them. Now there were at least thirty more floors of nothing between them and the roof of the garage entrance. The drops were going to have to be fast, and Bucky felt Ella’s exhaustion as if it were his own.  
  
“We should totally have a threesome when we get outta here,” he cracked, and Ella’s body literally jolted against him.  
  
“And you call Steve a jackass.”  
  
Bucky would have liked to have laughed at her retort, but all he could manage was a weak snort. He continued on with blatant obnoxiousness though. It worked well enough for Stark Jr… at least some of the time.  
  
“I have it on good authority that there’s a group of people on the internet who would love to be in the middle of that,” Bucky goaded her with a completely conversational tone. “Super Soldier Sammich, I think they called it.”  
  
“If the idea of plummeting to my death wasn’t paralyzing me right now, I’d punch you in the face,” she answered with just as much faux nonchalance.  
  
Bucky cooed back at her. “I’d probably like that a lot.”  
  
“James Buchanan Barnes, you are fucking disgusting, and I don’t know what Steve sees in you at all,” she muttered, and Bucky smiled wanly, knowing there wasn’t any real anger behind her words. She was onto him now, and merely firing back to add to the illusion of being distracted. He would have shrugged if he didn’t have his hands full.  
  
“Lady… I don’t either,” he sighed.  
  
*******************************************************************************  
  
Ella didn’t punch him in the mouth when they landed, and her shaking was more down to a persistent tremble. Bucky counted that as an enormous win after a night of enormously shitty luck and missteps.  
  
True to his promise, the hallway only had three hissers prone on the floor courtesy of Steve’s favorite weapon. A fourth didn’t have much of its head left, the blast damage looking suspiciously like the work of Bucky’s loaned sidearm. The fact that Steve was using it to blow away more than windows gave Bucky a flutter beneath his skin that he was certain was entirely inappropriate. He was also certain there wasn’t one cell left in his body that could muster up any fucks left to give. Steve using his gun alongside that iconic shield was hot in a way that Bucky would never even bother attempting to explain to anyone.  
  
Steve was about to do his next drop when Ella lifted her head and pointedly looked at him.  
  
“Bucky said we should have a threesome, by the way.”  
  
Steve nearly slipped off the edge of the window. Bucky glanced up at him, then back to his cable as he snorted out a good-natured laugh at Steve’s dazed expression. He was just too emotionally tired at this point to worry about it or panic. Steve would see it for the teasing jab that it was so long as Bucky didn’t openly freak out.  
  
“Oh,” Steve blinked owlishly at her, then his sharp tongue caught up. “Well I hope you like Thai food then.”  
  
“I demand the chicken satay have excellent peanut sauce.” Ella informed him imperiously, then waved him on, silently telling him he was holding up traffic. “Just a little heads up is all, Steve.”  
  
“Yeah,” Steve responded quicker than Bucky would normally have given him credit for on the naughtiness front. “Something to chew over on the way down.”  
  
Bucky groaned aloud at their painfully bad double entendres just before his best friend started his descent, but he was secretly proud of Steve for taking the joke in stride and rolling with it with such sass. He hadn’t even blushed. Who knew his favorite blond had enough of a filthy streak to fire back like that? It had the potential to cause the wrong kind of tension between the three of them, but instead it had brought Ella a little into their circle where inappropriate humor was a godsend. Even as the biochemist rubbed at her brow, one corner of her mouth was hitched slightly upward. That was another win in Bucky’s mind.  
  
His Stevie was on a roll; he’d found his stride in this mess, and that made Bucky’s own stride much easier to calibrate against it. They were dialing back into one another now, and it was starting to feel effortless again, despite their frazzled nerves. Maybe they might actually get out of this in spite of everything being thrown at them.  
  
***************************************************************************  
  
The next drop was blissfully uneventful save minor debris clouds floating down around them. Two bodies fell, but that seemed almost old hat now even to Ella. She kept a firm grip upon Bucky, and her face tucked away to maintain as much of her sanity as possible. Steve even gave Bucky a firm clap on the back and a small smile when they appeared in the window. The hallway was free of hissers, and even the smell was practically nonexistent for some reason.  
  
“They’re renovating this floor,” Steve explained, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. When Bucky looked closer, he saw the brown paint tape clinging to three of the doors at the end of the hallway. Outstanding. While Steve prepared for their last drop, Bucky listened intently at the first available door. There was no insistent pawing that he could detect, so he slid his magnet over the lock.  
  
“Buck?”  
  
“Don’t think we’re gonna make the SUV, Stevie. Gimme just a second…”  
  
He paused after opening the door, but nothing came at him so he entered. The room’s renovation was already complete, but there were still things left scattered by the work crew. As he’d hoped, there were a couple of full water bottles and a half-empty bag of snacks. There were also drop cloths wadded up in a corner. A box cutter lay out upon the countertop. It wasn’t much, but it would do. He gathered the items and quickly exited back to the hall. He gave Steve a subtle nod to let him know he was clear to drop before turning Ella around and unzipping her backpack. It all fit except the the drop cloth so Bucky let it drop to the floor once he’d ripped a smaller swatch from it.  
  
“I didn’t realize how freaking thirsty I was until I saw those,” Ella commented as Bucky gestured her toward the window.  
  
“Maybe we can knock over a Starbucks on the way to the airport,” he joked, though his voice was soft with the distraction of setting his cable. He looked up and gestured Ella to him as she groaned at the thought.  
  
“Oh god, an iced salted caramel sounds so fucking good right now,” she sighed.  
  
“Uh… still a fan of plain, black coffee,” Bucky muttered as he lifted her into place.  
  
“That’s settled then,” she promised him. “I’m getting one and you’re going to try it.”  
  
It sounded truly disgusting to Bucky, but there was no reason to argue just then. He’d developed one hell of a sweet tooth after coming in from the cold of HYDRA control, but nothing about throwing a bunch of salt onto caramel sounded appealing, especially in cold coffee. Still, there was a first time for everything and he might end up surprised. Steve had introduced him to the pure wonder of sushi, and he’d never thought he’d ever find any love for consuming raw fish.  
  
There was still about twenty-five feet between them and the garage roof when Steve screamed at him.  
  
“Bucky drop! Drop now!”  
  
Whatever Steve saw, Bucky didn’t question it. He thumbed the release and they fell.  
  
Ella’s screaming was all he registered before they were a mass of groaning, tangled limbs on the cement. Steve was already pulling himself free and dragging them to huddle next to the tower before either of them really had their wits back. Bucky’d taken the brunt of his own weight and Ella’s and it had knocked the wind from him. At least one rib was cracked, and his right elbow might be as well. His hip was screaming at him as he moved, but he had the presence of mind to force himself into a crouch over Ella as Steve did the same and tried to protect them with his shield.  
  
It all went blurry after that.  
  
Initially it was too dark for even his enhanced eyes to register anything. Sound was muted, but he thought he heard Steve’s voice. What did register with blaring clarity was pain. It was everywhere, but the worst was in his head. Bucky’s mouth felt like he’d swan-dived into a sand dune. He coughed and tried to spit, but all that did was set off a fresh wave of prickling pain.  
  
He heard Steve say that he was going to move Bucky, then everything tunneled and went black.  
  
The next time Bucky regained consciousness, Steve’s sooty face was hovering above his. The multiple pains had dulled to one, all-over throbbing ache, but it was at a level he could functionally endure.  
  
“…try to sit up a little…?”  
  
Steve’s voice came into focus as the ringing in Bucky’s ears dissipated. He opened his mouth to reply, but grit still coated his tongue and throat. Nodding didn’t work much better, so he waved his hand. Steve supported his back while Ella supported his neck and head from the opposite side. One of the water bottles was put to his lips.  
  
“Just enough to swish around. Don’t swallow it. Spit it out to clear your mouth, okay?”  
  
Ella’s voice that time, and it sounded coarse and scratchy.  
  
“I don’t know what year this place went up, but it’s anyone’s guess about asbestos.”  
  
“Eighty-four,” Steve answered, whipping out the year from the data he’d memorized about the tower. “What’s asbestos?”  
  
“Nasty stuff,” Ella answered. “It’s a mineral that was used– is still being used in a lot of building materials. It’s got these needle-like fibers in it. People inhaled it and started getting mesothelioma. They’ve banned it and unbanned it so many times. It’s disgusting how much money can override ethics…”  
  
Bucky quickly spit the gritty water from his mouth and stared up at Steve as he got The Look over what Ella was saying to him.  
  
“Meso…?”  
  
“Cancer,” Ella clarified. “You have a lining that protects your organs and this cancer forms tumors in that lining. There’s no cure for it. All you can do is extend life expectancy, but it takes forever to show up so by the time you know you have it, you’ve probably got about 5 years tops. It’s aggressive and horrible. I don’t know if it would even affect either of you, but why risk it?”  
  
She sat back and Bucky noticed the piece of drop cloth that he’d salvaged had been tied as a makeshift bandage for her right thigh. He winced as he reached out to touch it, still not feeling like saying much. She took his concern plainly enough.  
  
“Just a cut. I’m okay.”  
  
Bucky looked up at Steve with questioning eyes, so Steve filled him in.  
  
“The rest of the façade came down, and part of the top floor collapsed. Maybe more. I couldn’t see much before I was running to get below you to break your fall.”  
  
Bucky had to try a couple of times before he got the word out clear enough to be understood.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Steve looked genuinely shocked. “That’s it? No lecture?”  
  
“When do those work on you?” Bucky groused with a roll of his eyes. He reached for the water bottle, but Steve just held it back to his lips. Bucky’s knee-jerk reaction was to bitch about being babied by Steve, but this time he held it back. For once it was nice to feel Steve’s fussing.  
  
“Pretty much never, but I’ve gotten used to hearing them,” Steve chuckled. “You got a hit to the head, Buck. You don’t lecture me and I’ll start worrying you’ve got brain damage.”  
  
“Fuck you, Stevie.” His voice came out clearer now that he’d had a proper drink of water. Steve broke into a blinding grin above him.  
  
“Okay, no brain damage then. Good.” He glanced above them, his features darkening with concern. “Can we get you upright, Buck? This thing still isn’t stable. More could still come down. It’s been making a lot of noise while you’ve been out.”  
  
Bucky looked up as well, but now he did have a lecture on the tip of his tongue. Steve apparently saw it coming and held up his hand with a shake of his head.  
  
“Oh don’t even,” he warned. “It’s not like I could toss you off the top of the garage and we weren’t gonna leave you here.”  
  
“Should have. Not safe,” Bucky growled as Steve helped him stand. Ribs definitely cracked. Elbow… sore but functional. Hip also sore, but less so than his elbow. The back of his head though; now that hurt still. His vision was off. Not blurry, but his depth perception wasn’t right. It would make shooting interesting for a while, but he could compensate. It wouldn’t be the first time.  
  
“You’re not disposable,” Steve snapped irritably. “I don’t appreciate you implying that you are.”  
  
“The mission isn’t about-”  
  
“The mission is all three of us getting back safely, Bucky, not just Ella.”  
  
There was that classic Rogers temper flaring again. Steve was a softie for a lot of things, but that temper was fierce over anything he perceived as worth protecting. Bucky knew he was high up on that list, but he was only now just realizing that he might actually be at the top of it. It bothered him that Steve might put him above the mission itself, but when he took a mental step back, he would do the same for Steve without hesitation. Without even thinking.  
  
“Fine, but I don’t want you endangering yourselves if I become incapacitated again. I go down, you keep going-”  
  
Bucky didn’t get a chance to finish his thought as they moved slowly toward the edge of the garage overhang because Steve abruptly rounded on him. He invaded Bucky’s space with unbridled anger in his eyes, but he didn’t yell or raise his voice.  
  
“No.”  
  
It was one word, but the force behind it gave Bucky pause. He blinked up at Steve, but those steely blue eyes weren’t blinking back at all. Steve was staring a hole through Bucky as he dared him to argue. With his eyes flaring like that and pulled up to his full, imposing height, it caused a shiver to run through Bucky’s body that had nothing to do with the intimidation Steve had intended. He’d seen Steve pull alpha dog behavior on people plenty of times before, but this was the first time Bucky had it directed at himself. He’d been a little shit and an immovable wall before, but he’d never pulled anything like this on Bucky. As much as part of Bucky wanted to puff up and snarl at Steve, a bigger part of him would have been fighting down a massive erection had it not been for the array of aches and pains he was currently trying to ignore. It surprised Bucky just how much he wanted to explore that side of Steve once they were back in the safety of Steve’s apartment.  
  
“Fucking punk,” Bucky growled, but it was too soft to have any real effect. To his shock, Steve didn’t immediately soften or back down at his verbal olive branch. He remained silent and looming until Ella put her hands to their chest and firmly pushed at them both.  
  
“You can piss on each other’s trees later, okay? Save the wolf pack mentality for the flight home, soldiers.”  
  
“No pissing match,” Bucky assured her while he silently prayed his poker face was still good enough to feign being unfazed by the unsettling look Steve still had locked upon him. “Just Steve asserting himself. No worries.”  
  
Steve allowed Ella to move him backward a step, but he didn’t move of his own volition until Bucky stepped past him. Needing to break the tension, Bucky slugged him lightly with his metal fist. Once his back was to Steve, he looked over his shoulder with a carefully crafted smirk.  
  
“You wanna sniff my ass too, Stevie?”  
  
That earned him an empty water bottle to the back of the head… which wouldn’t have hurt had it not been for the major goose egg he had back there.  
  
********************************************************************  
  
“I’ll go get it.”  
  
Bucky looked up, not having heard Steve. Or at least he didn’t bother comprehending them. His mind was still preoccupied with that little display on the garage. They were down at street level now, and Steve was looking at him in a way that he was expecting Bucky to argue.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Did you get hit harder than we thought?” Steve laughed, but the sound of it was a little strained. “I’ll go get the SUV. Don’t bother arguing with me,” he added, trying to capitalize on his earlier show. Bucky just snorted loudly in his face. He’d been obsessing over it too much for Steve to get the same results twice.  
  
“I don’t need to argue with you because we’re all going or none of us is going. Isn’t that what you were just waving your dick over just now?” Steve opened his mouth to respond, his brows dipping dangerously over Bucky’s crude remark, but Bucky didn’t give him the chance to speak. He turned, grabbed Ella’s hand and started quickly down the sidewalk.  
  
“Why yes, Bucky, it was exactly what I was patriotically pouting about on the garage because our mission is that we all get back safely and no one is expendable so I was just kidding about going into the garage alone out of some misplaced noble defect in my stubborn, punk-ass personality, especially when you, Bucky, are oh-so-capable of stealing that conveniently parked security vehicle across the street.”  
  
He desperately wanted to see Ella’s expression when she began openly laughing, but he didn’t dare for fear of joining in. Laughing along with her would take the punch right out of his words, and he _was_ being serious even while being facetious.  
  
“Fine,” Steve sighed behind him. “Laid it on a bit thick… but fine.”  
  
Another win. Hot damn.  
  
*****************************************************************  
  
Breaking into the smaller SUV proved to be the easy part. Steve smiled to himself as he watched Bucky pat down his pockets. He pulled a metal device roughly the size of a Lego from his own pocket and pointed it at the Chevy. After a moment, the lock on the driver’s side popped open. Bucky glanced back at him with a smile of thanks, then opened the driver’s door. Steve was about to tell him that the fob could handle the ignition as well when Bucky reached over the top of the steering wheel and ripped the steering column open. Ella paused to stare as she climbed into the back seat. Shifting his position slightly, Bucky grinned back at Steve as the engine came to life. He stepped back from the Chevy, slapped Steve on the back and walked around to the passenger side.  
  
“Still ain’t drivin’ here.”  
  
“Thanks…” Steve swung his body behind the steering wheel and stared at the mangled steel. Bucky removed his rifle from his shoulder and stashed it along the middle console. He climbed in and was about to shut his door when Steve looked over at him.  
  
“Guard rail… hand gun… express hotwiring… What’s next, monogrammed towels?”  
  
Bucky froze for a moment, his eyes wide as he looked at Steve, first in the eye.  
  
Then his gaze flicked to Steve’s mouth… and his pupils dilated.  
  
Then the moment was gone. Bucky rolled his eyes as looked away to shut the door and fastened his belt. “Damn it, Steve, you just ruined your Christmas present.”  
  
Steve felt like he couldn’t swallow. He hadn’t imagined that. No way. He couldn’t have. Bucky was the one that got smacked in the head with cement, not him. Was he just acting along though? No, pupils didn’t do that just from acting… did they?  
  
Steve was still staring at Bucky when they heard the chilling, blast-like sound of collapse above them. He didn’t think. He threw the SUV into gear and left a trail of tire smoke in their wake as he peeled out. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, he saw Ella trying to see out the side window.  
  
“Ella get down. We’re likely gonna lose windows.”  
  
Bucky looked over the back of the seat as Steve followed the curve of Hope Street toward 4th.  
  
“Grab that jacket and cover your back and head,” he ordered, pointing to a yellow-lined stadium jacket with SECURITY emblazoned upon the back. If that worker was still alive, his jacket was likely the least of his worries, or even the SUV for that matter.  
  
When Steve reached 4th, he remembered a unique feature from their drive to the tower. While he was darting around abandoned cars, there were thankfully none moving on any of the surrounding streets. He skidded the Chevy into a brutal ninety degree angle that landed them onto a down-sloped ramp. They heard the rumbling even over the whine of the Chevy’s engine. Bucky was slapping all the vents shut that he could reach as Steve hit the gas and spun the SUV around again, this time into a full 180. Debris was already buffeting the Chevy before he floored the accelerator, and they squealed into a nook beneath the Hope  & 4th underpass that housed the entrance to the Hope Parking Garage.  
  
“Good catch, Stevie,” Bucky muttered as he watched the windows cautiously. The maelstrom of pulverized dust that raced past them obscured the city lights to pitch blackness, and Steve heard Ella sitting up in the seat. She was initially quiet as the cloud continued to swirl ominously while it searched out the path of least resistance.  
  
“Watching it on TV and seeing it for real... I had no idea...” she whispered, "I was expecting worse but... This is still.... It sounds like... Those videos people took... none of them really captured the sound..."  
  
Steve and Bucky had watched archival footage of the 9-11 attacks, both of them mostly too stunned to speak. They’d stayed pressed very close together on the couch as they tried to wrap their heads around it. As the Asset, Bucky had only been privy to the events HYDRA felt were necessary to keep him in a certain mindset. Steve wasn’t sure why that hadn’t made the cut, but he was grateful that Bucky was seeing it for the first time with his own eyes rather than the Asset’s.  
  
“I got us out of the way of the worst of the debris blast, and this... bad as it is, it's nowhere as bad as New York… the Trade Center Towers were much bigger… like an acre per floor,” Steve murmured. He shifted and the back of his hand bumped against Bucky’s. Neither of them moved from the contact as Steve spoke. “Also thirty-some floors higher… I’m not sure the whole tower came down just now. Maybe just the section above the grenade damage. This…? We got lucky… Real lucky.”  
  
Ella leaned forward with her voice lowered to a whisper. “Let’s keep it that way. Their sense of smell was getting better, so let’s assume their hearing will too. Back to radio silence until we’re moving again?”  
  
Steve and Bucky looked at one another across the console of the Chevy. Bucky shrugged his shoulders. Steve agreed with him; there was no harm in it and every benefit to playing it safe. There was no point in trying to drive yet either; the visibility was horrific. No point in going through all they’d just endured just to get reckless and wreck the SUV, so they stayed put until the dense cloud of debris settled.  
  
Bucky pulled his phone from his pocket. Being a Stark Industries phone, it didn’t have a mark on it, only smudges of dust and dirt from them being caught in the fallout on the garage roof. He poked at the screen until a display showed him the surrounding traffic patterns. Bucky’s jaw went a bit slack at the lack of movement on the screen, then he held it out to Steve.  
  
He’d be lying if he tried to say the thought of flipping over to the text screen didn’t cross his mind. Steve refrained though, not wanting to start another commotion from Bucky trying to grab the phone back. Something was going on. Ella’s insistence that they hook up kept sliding around under his skin, and Bucky’s reactions to his moments of teasing seemed to support that, but Steve still couldn’t be sure of it. He wasn’t convinced that it was Ella’s suggestions that were causing him to just see what he desperately wanted to see.  
  
“Earth to Steve,” Bucky whispered, and Steve snapped his focus back to the screen.  
  
“Yeah… sorry.” He touched the options button on the display then selected “all vehicles”. The map changed, and both men sucked in a sharp breath of dismay. The cars Bucky saw initially were ones that still had their engines running but were stationary. Steve’s setting showed cars there weren’t running but weren’t in appropriate areas for parking.  
  
They were everywhere.  
  
The streets surrounding them in a five-mile radius were littered with abandoned cars. When Steve pinched his fingers then spread them over the screen to expand the view out to fifteen miles, the story was still just as bleak. If this app was anything to go by, Los Angeles had essentially died while they were escaping the tower. Steve hoped most of the owners of those cars had merely fled, but it seemed unlikely given the way the virus had spread inside the tower.  
  
Bucky swatted his arm. Beyond the dust-caked windshield, a hisser appeared. As it loped along, another came into view a few feet behind. Ella’s hand squeezed his shoulder slowly, and a glance to his peripheral showed her other hand just above Bucky’s prosthetic. Her message was clear enough: _Don’t move. Wait to see if they notice us._  
  
The three remained still and silent as several more hissers seemed to materialize from the slowly settling cloud of dust. They looked even more heinous now, covered head to toe in white-grey. The dust caked and clumped anywhere they had wounds. Many had singular bites, vicious gouges taken from necks, arms, shoulders, and even faces. Many were additionally wounded by the flying debris from the tower. The lack of visible red blood didn’t make the scene any less gory.  
  
Steve felt Ella’s lips next to his ear as she breathed out. “Eyes don’t blink. Caked. Might’ve blinded them.”  
  
Steve didn’t bother to nod. He was taking the directive of not moving very seriously, as was Bucky. Of course Bucky never had a problem with that once he became a soldier. Steve found himself missing the effervescent twitching of the young man he used to commit to paper every chance he got. He missed that nicotine-scratched, carefree voice telling him that his pencils were better wasted on other subjects. For all that Steve loved to capture the world around him in graphite, not one artistic bone in his body longed to sketch anything he saw before him.  
  
Ella’s hand left his shoulder and waved slowly at the windshield. Steve held his breath and he saw Bucky’s flesh hand tighten around the handgrip on his door. His prosthetic was eerily silent, not a single gear, piston, or plate shifted. Steve had never thought to ask Bucky if he could lock the arm to prevent movement and subsequent mechanical noise.  
  
Steve counted forty-one hissers so far, and a few seconds after Ella waved her hand, they all slowed to a stop almost simultaneously. Their heads only moved once their noses started to twitch and test the air.  
  
“Now, Steve,” Bucky whispered.  
  
“Yeah,” Steve choked his acknowledgement back at Bucky as he reached for the ignition.  
  
Except there wasn’t a key.  
  
“Buck…”  
  
“Shit,” Bucky growled under his breath. His arm whined back to life as he reached into the steering column. More of the hissers started to turn toward them, still testing the air.  
  
“They are blind,” Ella whispered. “They’re finding us by smell.”  
  
“Great,” Steve breathed back as Bucky fished around in the column. “Buck…?”  
  
“Just a sec, Steve.”  
  
As seven more hissers appeared on the other side of the street, Steve curled his fingers insistently against the back of Bucky’s neck.  
  
“ _Now_ , Buck.”  
  
Bucky glanced up, taking in the new arrivals and the fact that they were starting to move toward their position. He made a soft noise in the back of this throat and went back to his task. If they’d been able to reach their own SUV, there would have been no problem. It could become airtight with the CO2 scrubbers lining the ceiling. They could have a hundred hissers surround them and it wouldn’t make a difference. The weight of the armor plating would keep it from being rolled, and the blast-resistant windows would easily hold against the smacking and clawing of a horde.  
  
There were no guarantees with the security vehicle, though given the crime rates in LA proper, the windows could possibly be bulletproof.  
  
The engine finally came to life and the change in the hissers was immediate. They started walking with purpose now, rather than curious meandering. Steve remembered the readout on Bucky’s phone as he threw the Chevy into gear and tore out of the underpass.  
  
“Seatbelt, Ella,” he gritted as the Tahoe knocked bodies aside. He didn’t look to see if she complied, but he noted that even Bucky had fastened his. His metal fingers were curled around the barrel of his rifle and his sidearm was gripped against his knee, at the ready.  
  
Between the debris and the hissers, it wasn’t exactly a smooth ride up 4th Street. They were going the wrong direction up the one-way street, but it didn’t matter. No one else was around. All Steve had to worry about was dodging cars abandoned in the middle of the street.  
  
They’d gone about a mile, not bothering with the car park that used to be the 110 Freeway, when Steve had to slam on the breaks. He immediately threw the SUV into reverse to avoid the mass of hissers clogging the street ahead.  
  
“Oh fuck.” The surprise in Bucky’s voice mirrored Steve’s own shock. The horde started running at them at full speed. This was no old, cheesy Romero flick. These zombies were moving _fast_ , albeit with a bit less coordination than a living being.  
  
Steve changed their direction down the first sizable street option they had. It went on like that for twenty minutes. They’d make progress, only to have to backtrack to avoid a problematic clot of hissers. The Tahoe only had just under a half tank of gas when they’d stolen it, and the harsh driving paces Steve was forced to put it through wasn’t doing their MPG any favors. The idea of trying to stop at a gas station seemed ludicrous, but finding another vehicle better suited to their needs seemed a longer shot. Nevertheless, Steve voiced the option to Bucky.  
  
“I’ll keep watch,” he answered, gripping the handle above his window as Steve swerved around another abandoned car. “If we go with gas, find one of those big ones that’s more out in the open. We’re gonna need a long line-of-sight, Stevie.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Steve agreed.  
  
“Your driving is has gotten better, at least,” Bucky hummed as his eyes scanned the vehicles they flew past.  
  
“Feel free to take over, Buck,” Steve snipped tightly.  
  
“Calm down, pal, that was a compliment,” Bucky laughed gently.  
  
Ella clearly wanted to nip a verbal sparring match in the bud as she chimed in.  
  
“I can drive if the need arises.”  
  
Bucky glanced back at her before returning his watchful gaze to the street outside. “Oh yeah?”  
  
“Yeah, I took defensive driving and some other classes a few months before I did the Long Beach Charity Grand Prix this year.”  
  
Both men looked back at her at the same time before looking at one another and breaking into a grin.  
  
“Thai food and car racing,” Steve mused, then shrugged his shoulders in why-not fashion. “I’m okay with that.”  
  
As Ella chuckled amiably in the backseat, Bucky gave him an extended side-long look before silently returning his eyes to his window. Steve didn’t miss the subtle smile though. He still wasn’t sure he could blatantly tell Bucky what he felt, but maybe he could leave the door open with little hints. Bucky had so much still weighing upon him that it had to be his choice to act upon any openings Steve left him.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope Street overpass at 4th Street, DTLA  
> The US Bank Tower is top, left of center. The Bonaventure Hotel is the mirrored, clover-shaped building to the far right. 
> 
>  


	8. "...let's just Red Dawn this."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as they find their stride again, everything goes to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Shaish for previewing a snippet of this and giving her input. :)
> 
> This is gonna sting a lot, I think. I would say I'm sorry, but I'm a writer so I'd totally be lying. Well, mostly. Trust me when I tell you that it really will be okay. That said, I've added a new warning tag, but it's in the End Notes for those that don't want the spoiler.
> 
> Sorry for the long wait on this chapter! I've become a bit of a social butterfly as the holidays have arrived, and also work is insane right now. We're closed for two weeks after the 19th though, and I'm hoping to buckle down and get a lot of writing done. I have plot bunnies piling up like the zombies in this story.
> 
> As always, thank you so much to those of you hanging in there with me on this! I appreciate the feedback, kudos, recs... all of it! You're all amazing. :)

Steve pulled the Tahoe into an Arco am/pm mini-mart on Santa Monica & Vermont. It wasn’t as big and open as they’d hoped for, but it would do. It was a bit too compact of an area, but the gauge showed empty and they were out of options. As much as Bucky had hoped for seeing a civvie Hummer, this apparently wasn’t a neighborhood where people were more concerned with social status than fuel economy. The Tahoe wasn’t exactly a go-cart, but heavier would have been nice. He was still going to keep an eye open once they got back on the road though.   
  
“Ella, you mind pumping the gas?” Bucky asked as he fished his card out of his uniform. “I know your hands are probably sore, but I’m gonna send Steve inside to raid the mini-mart. I’ll stay here with you to keep watch.”   
  
“I’m okay, Bucky. This something I can actually do for a change.” Her voice was tired, but her eyes were alert. They’d backtracked and diverted so many times to avoid clots of hissers that the ride hadn’t been boring. It kept them all on edge enough that she was in no danger of becoming groggy again.   
  
Bucky handed over his card to Ella, then turned as Steve got out of the driver’s side. “Hey, I’m gonna play sniper out here. Raid the food section inside, but also anything medical if they have it. Ella could probably use some Tylenol or something. Some of that No-Doz shit if they have it.”   
  
“Yessir,” Steve grinned with a touch to his temple. Bucky swatted Steve’s shoulder then reached for his rifle.    
  
“Bucky, what’s the PIN?” Ella asked.   
  
“Seventy-four eighteen,” Bucky answered her without thinking. He was too consumed with his firearm to notice the way Steve paused to look back at him. He shouldered it and re-aligned the sight after having it knocked askew by their fall earlier. They still had roughly two hours before dawn, so he pulled his goggles up and clicked them over to night vision. His own vision was still slightly off, but his scope helped to offset that.     
  
He methodically scanned their surroundings, but a flick of his eyes had him noting the way Ella seemed to have checked out mentally. He went back to scanning the two streets as he called to her quietly.   
  
“Still with me, Ella?”   
  
It took her a second, but then she nodded. “Yeah. Just… I was just realizing that, even after we get back, there’s so much work to do.” She looked up and smiled flatly. “Just wondering when I’ll get to actually sleep through a whole night again.”   
  
“You’ll get about four solid hours on the jet,” Bucky offered. “The couch on it is comfortable, but tired as you are already? You’ll go right out even if you lay down on the floor.”   
  
Ella’s smile warmed back up and her eyes flickered mischievously. “How would you know about the couch, Sergeant Barnes? Aren’t you normally the pilot?”   
  
“I am when I’m not unconscious,” he smirked, gaze still panning around their perimeter.   
  
“That happen a lot?” Elle frowned.   
  
“Once,” Bucky confirmed. “One of my ex-handlers managed to go underground. I was with Steve after that, working on recovering my memories. When I was well enough we found him, but he used a trigger phrase on me then electrocuted me. Not sure how many volts I got, but it knocked me out for about two hours. Scared the shit outta Steve. I’m not saddened to say that agent apparently didn’t like his life much once Steve got a hold of him. He didn’t survive incarceration. No one’s copping to it, but I don’t care. If they hadn’t done it, I would have once I gained access to him.”   
  
“I can imagine,” Ella murmured. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to honestly confront him… but it’s good to know that you’re cared about to the extent that someone would be willing to take that burden for you.” She pulled the fuel nozzle out of the Tahoe when it clicked off, and replaced the cap on the gas tank. Bucky darted her a look of surprise. Of all the things he expected of her reaction-wise, calm sympathy wasn’t one of them.   
  
“Never thought about it like that, but yeah… I guess so,” he admitted honestly as he turned his attention back to the view beyond his rifle’s scope. He really hadn’t considered that sentiment, and it settled funny inside his chest. It might have been more out of their regard for Steve. No matter though. Whichever of the Avenger unit took out Gregorson, they were kind enough to put a final chapter into his Winter Soldier story. It felt like a bit of relief finally, regardless of who did the deed.    
  
Ella nodded then her eyes shifted to the mini-mart where Steve already had several plastic bags filled. 

  
“Should we go grab some of that?”   
  
“Negative,” Bucky breathed, his body abruptly stilling as he slipped fully into sniper mode. His right finger barely moved as he caressed the rifle’s trigger, and a single, muted pop sounded. He stared through the scope for a moment more to confirm the kill, then raised his eyes to check that the rest of their surroundings were still zombie free.   
  
Beside him, Ella shivered and rubbed her arms in spite of her jacket.   
  
“Get back in the Tahoe if you’re cold.”   
  
“It’s not that,” she confessed. “It’s seeing you do that. You uh... When you do that… It’s like someone else takes over for a minute.”   
  
“Just training and conditioning,” Bucky answered with a shrug.    
  
“It’s chilling,” she muttered.   
  
“Sorry.”   
  
“Don’t be,” she sighed. “When I see you get like that, I feel safe with you standing between me and those things.”   
  
“You shouldn’t,” Bucky warned her, risking a stern glance her direction. “You can have the whole of the Avengers and a battalion between you and them, but you’re not safe. You’ll feel that way, yeah, but don’t believe it. Bad luck and poor timing happens, Ella. Always remember that. You’re as much responsible for keeping yourself alive as we are, and that starts with your own mindset first and foremost.”   
  
“Are you this critical of everyone, Bucky, or is it worse with me because I’m a civilian?”   
  
Bucky did a double take, then glanced over at the mini-mart. Steve looked about done, so he lowered his voice and stepped close to Ella.   
  
“I’m not being critical, Ella, just straight forward. I need you to be as perfect as possible because my judgement is still not what it should be. You keep looking at me and Steve like we’re the same, but we’re not. He’s always been the one that just knows what the right thing to do is. I don’t… If I get put into a position of protecting you or protecting Steve, this will all go to hell because I’ll choose him. I’ll do it instinctively before I even have a chance to actually think about it. I can’t… I don’t know if I’ll ever...”   
  
He huffed in irritation and frustration as he tapped his temple. “Above all else, Ella, the one thing that’s been hardwired into my brain since I was sixteen is to protect that kid in there. I’ll take my last fucking breath watching over that idiot. He’s my weakness and my blind spot… so I need you to make sure you stay well and fucking clear of that spot… Understand?”   
  
Bucky felt like a royal asshole as Ella nodded with her eyes a little too wide. He heard the soft rustling of the plastic bags Steve carried, so he squeezed the back of Ella’s shoulder in a silent effort to soften the sting of what he’d just said. To his surprise, she gave him a slower nod as reassurance that she really did understand what he was trying to tell her; he did care about what happened to her, and knowing that he might fail her was a conflict that deeply bothered him.   
  
“I heard you fire,” Steve spoke softly as he approached. “We good?”   
  
“Yep,” Bucky answered, lowering his rifle and replacing it along the Tahoe’s console. He reached for some of the bags and saw that Steve had dumped several of his favorite brand of candy bar inside.   
  
“Snickers! Careful, Stevie... One Snickers is a friendly gesture. Eight is more like a declaration of love,” he teased, leaving out the minor detail that his insides warmed over it being the only candy Steve had bothered to grab. Climbing into the passenger seat, he snatched the little bar of heaven out of the stolen stash. He’d unwrapped it and had half of it shoved into his mouth when he realized Steve hadn't fired back at him with any sass, and was preoccupied with the address on the side of the Arco.   
  
“What’s wrong,” he mumbled past a mouthful of chocolate-covered nougat, caramel, and peanuts.   
  
“Nothing,” Steve replied, reaching for the ignition out of habit. Bucky quickly sucked the caramel from his metal forefinger and thumb before he reached over to fiddle with the steering column. The engine came to life and Steve huffed a soft laugh. He swiped the last bite of the Snickers from Bucky’s hand and popped it into his mouth. He ignored Bucky’s grunt of protest as he put the Tahoe into gear and steered them back onto Santa Monica.   
  
“I was just taking note of the address.”   
  
“What about it?” Bucky fished through the bag for another Snickers, then re-thought his actions and eyed the choice of sandwiches. “Chicken salad, mystery rib meat, or uh… are these hot dogs..?”   
  
“I think they’re supposed to be bratwurst.”   
  
“They look like they came from Chernobyl, Steve...” Bucky somberly informed Steve, dubiously eyeing the strange, misshapen meat link. It was a frail, geriatric, phantom of a bratwurst. “Someone needs to educate this sad establishment.”   
  
“Yeah well, amen for sad establishments right now. I’ll take the mystery rib meat for $500, Alex,” Ella chirped and made grabby hands from the back seat. Bucky and Steve had watched far too much Jeopardy during their downtime not to get the joke, though neither was willing to admit it.   
  
“Gross,” Bucky muttered, and handed the surprisingly hot sandwich over. It smelled great, but looked disgusting.   
  
“Gimme the chicken salad, Buck,” Steve answered, “and the woeful, corporate excuse for bratwurst.”   
  
“You got it pal.” Bucky carefully opened the plastic container with the chicken salad and handed it to Steve. He raised his eyebrows for Steve to answer his earlier question before the temptation of food got the better of them.   
  
“Nothing,” Steve reiterated before taking a large bite of the sandwich. “Just remembering the address so SHIELD can reimburse the owner later.”   
  
Bucky had opened a bottle of Gatorade, and was chugging away the dryness in his throat when he nearly snorted the hydrating drink out of his nose. He shook his head slowly and wiped at his mouth.   
  
“You think that owner will even have much of a station left to worry about before this all gets figured out, Steve?”   
  
“Maybe not… All the more reason that a check from us will be appreciated.”   
  
“You gonna have Fury send a check to the US Bank Tower owners too?” Bucky asked as he offered up his Gatorade to Steve. He handed the bag with more drinks back to Ella so she could choose one, along with the packets of Tylenol Steve found. He set the questionable brat on the console for Steve, then looked through another bag. There were three pop-tab cans of plain tuna that Bucky knew were specifically for him. He needed the protein, but didn’t like to feel weighed down during a mission. He’d mix it it with the plastic cup of egg salad he hadn’t mentioned, knowing it was also earmarked for him. A small box of Ritz crackers completed his requirements for reasonably tasty grub. The fourth bag, filled with nothing but protein bars and Muscle Milk, would supplement the gaps in the fast food.   
  
“I’m sure that’ll be handled by ten different sub-committees, at least six of which will want to rake us both over the coals for three or four hours before they send us back out to clean up their messes,” Steve grunted after taking a healthy swig of Bucky’s Gatorade. “The Arco though… I’m sure a lot of business are going to have a bad time of it once people start looting, but we’re not looters, Buck. I’d leave cash if it wouldn’t just be stolen.”   
  
“Store owner could very well be dead,” Bucky reasoned. “The store was abandoned, not locked up.”   
  
“Still probably has relatives or beneficiaries.”   
  
“Okay,” Bucky smiled back at Ella. She was stuffing her face, but wore a look of awe as she studied Steve.   
  
“Don’t make fun of me, Buck,” Steve groused past a bite of the bratwurst Bucky had set out for him.   
  
“I’m not,” Bucky assured him. “I’m just as amused by it now as I’ve always been, Stevie. You’re like some rare, mythical creature with how noble you are.”   
  
“Unicorn,” Ella offered before popping the tab on a Vanilla Starbucks can and groaning in pure delight as it hit her taste buds.   
  
“Fuck off, both of you,” Steve growled harmlessly as he crinkled the hot dog wrapper and whipped it at Bucky. He held his hand out expectantly, and Bucky grinned wolfishly as he slapped another opened chicken salad sandwich into Steve’s palm.   
  
  
  
_________________________________________________________________________

  
  


Steve was getting more adept at this zombie dodging business. He and Bucky always had profound senses of direction; it was yet another aspect where they were so seamless that it often used to mess with the other Commandos’ heads. That only helped as far as keeping them aware of where they needed to go. It didn’t help with actually being able to follow through. Still, Steve was getting more savvy to what he could push the Chevy through rather than pulling a fast 180 every time they saw a large clot of the hissers. It was keeping them on track for the airport a little more than before.   
  
They were in the middle of a moderate swarm, Steve keeping the gas even and grimacing at the dirty, red smears along the windows, when Ella suddenly grabbed his shoulder and pointed ahead.   
  
“Steve, there! Up ahead is Lankershim. Take that!”   
  
“It’s going to take us off track again, Ella,” Steve frowned, not taking his eyes from the road. “This isn’t that bad. We’ll push through them okay.”    
  
“It won’t put us that far off course and it’s a wider street. You can maneuver better if we hit more clots. We can take it up to Burbank, then cut back over to Vineland… C’mon, Steve, it’s a better option than this. I’ve stayed out here enough to know.”   
  
He glanced sideways at Bucky, but the other man only shrugged. “Hard to argue with more room to maneuver. I don’t have a gut feeling either way, but I think we might be pushing our luck wading through these things for too long. Our track record tonight ain’t been all that.”   
  
“Yeah…” Steve huffed softly, then squared his shoulders. “Yeah. Okay… left on Lankershim it is…”   
  
He was nudging the Tahoe toward the left side of the street when the small break he was trying for gave way to a young girl. As far as zombies went, she was still in relatively good shape with her blonde ringlets still clean and her iCarly shirt free of rips or blood stains.   
  
“Steve, don’t do it…”   
  
Despite Bucky’s warning, and the earlier episode with the couple and their son, Steve still hit the brakes. All he could do was stare at her. She looked so normal, save for her milky eyes. With her gaze averted, Steve couldn’t get his mind to see her like the rest, dead and beyond saving.   
  
“Steve, now. Start driving, or get out of that seat.”   
  
There was an authority in Bucky’s voice that Steve couldn’t turn off, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away either. The swam was beginning to rock the Chevy side-to-side, and he was dimly aware of Ella making a distressed noise behind him.   
  
“Ella, don’t watch this.”   
  
That set off a warning bell in Steve’s head. His heart started to pound in his chest as Bucky popped the sunroof and stood. Steve snapped from his reverie as Bucky fed his rifle up through the opening and angled it enough to set up his shot.   
  
“Bucky wait..! Don’t!”   
  
He jerked his eyes back to the young girl, then flinched against his seat as the rifle reported with a sharp, metallic pop. Tears flooded his eyes as her body fell to the pavement and remained motionless. Seven more hissers fell to Bucky’s keen aim, opening their path up more, but Steve’s hearing was muted as though his body had reverted to its pre-serum state. Bucky’s voice came to him muddy and distorted.   
  
“Steve, in the passenger seat, now….  That’s an order, soldier. ”   
  
It didn’t matter that they weren’t enlisted anymore. It didn’t matter that Steve would outrank Bucky even if they were. Steve’s whole body felt numb as he obeyed without argument. It was awkward climbing around Bucky, but little of it registered past his sluggish movements. He was on autopilot now. Seatbelt. Breathe in. Breathe out. Nothing else was needed at that particular moment, though he was vaguely aware of soft sniffling behind him. There was anger trying to come to a boil in his gut, but mostly he just felt sick. He’d be angry at himself again once the nausea passed. A tiny part of him was frantically throwing switches and dialing knobs to get his brain back online, but nothing had sparked with enough force yet.   
  
Beside him, Bucky had closed the sunroof, settled his rifle back to its spot, and was pushing his seatbelt buckle into place as he put the Tahoe into gear. It was then that Steve gave in and closed his eyes. He pressed his fingertips against his eyelids and tried to block everything out as the SUV did what it did best. Bucky remained silent through the bumps and scratching. Steve almost wished he would say something, but the wiser part of his mind told him that nothing Bucky likely had to say right now would do anything less than sting. Bucky didn’t gloss anything over these days, and he was never one to back away from calling Steve on his bullshit. It was a good bet that any criticism Bucky had to level at Steve, he’d already thought of at least three times over in the last ninety seconds.   
  
As the scuffing sounds of grasping hands fell away, Steve felt the SUV pick up speed. One thought started on a loop inside his head and he breathed sharply through his nose.   
  
“I’m sorry, Bucky,” he called softly, his eyes still tightly shut. “You were right… I couldn’t see her like the rest.”   
  
There was no audible shift or sigh from Bucky; only his voice reaching Steve’s ears clear and firm.   
  
“It’s who you are, Steve. You need to accept it and figure out how to work around it somehow, otherwise it’s gonna stay a dangerous liability.”   
  
That almost made Steve feel worse. He’d expected Bucky to be annoyed and curt with him. Instead he sounded sympathetic beneath the authoritative tone. He opened his eyes and stared out the window. Lankershim was blissfully clear, which he was thankful for.   
  
“Ella…? I’m sorry. I put us in danger-”   
  
He gave a shamed, furtive glance backward as a small hand pressed to the back of his shoulder. “I couldn’t have done it either. I have a friend with a daughter about that age. That’s all I could see.”   
  
Steve nodded slowly, but he was more concerned by the sudden pinched look he caught on Bucky’s face. Things had clearly twisted around in his head again. Steve recognized the sting of self-loathing behind his best friend’s eyes, and he searched for the right thing to say to pull the funhouse mirror away from Bucky’s view. Just as Steve always compared himself to Bucky before Project Rebirth, Bucky tended to compare himself to Steve now, though not physically. He looked to Steve to have enough moral compass for them both because he still fell into feeling like he wasn’t really a good man. Steve and Ella weren’t really helping that perception, although it wasn’t intentional. If bright, shining example Steve Rogers couldn’t find it within himself to shoot the girl, what did that say about Bucky?    
  
Heart breaking yet again for the most important person in his world, Steve swallowed hard and turned his body to fully look at Bucky.   
  
“Buck, listen… I know where your head’s at now and-”   
  
Steve’s words halted as Bucky’s head snapped to the side to look his direction. Confusion was the only thing that registered as Bucky jerked the wheel hard before Steve felt the impact. He didn’t see what hit his side of the Chevy, but everything slowed down as the world rotated around them.   
  
  
______________________________________________

 

  
Pain pulled him back. Pain, and a beloved voice fraught with terror. Acrid smoke burning his nose, and an uncomfortable pressure in his face and head were the next things he became aware of. His arms were above his head at a strange angle, and there was tingling from the decreased circulation. That was odd.   
  
Steve was still trying to work out why his leg hurt as another voice joined in, this one higher pitched but just as worried. The words should mean something to him, but they slipped away each time he tried to grasp outward for them. They were little, fragile wisps that tickled at him then dissipated like the smoke he kept smelling.   
  
More pressure. Torso, head, neck. Hands were checking him, passing over his body in search of… something. Maybe the pain in his-   
  
Leg.   
  
Steve cried out against the hand covering his mouth as another hand felt along his leg. White-hot needles of pain pulsed up and down his thigh, and his knee sent up its own sympathy pains.   
  
“Shhh,” the higher, softer voice told him. “I know it hurts, but you have to try to stay quiet, Steve.”   
  
Steve. Right. That was his name.    
  
Ella. That was the voice he’d just heard. Hers was the hand over his mouth, and now that his brain began to expand its awareness, she also had a hand behind his neck where it met his shoulders.   
  
He was upside down. That was odd. It explained the pressure in his head, and why his arms felt so heavy and prickly.   
  
More pain, but this time his body sagged sharply downward and ignited secondary, needle-sharp spasms along his back. Steve panted through it as he was carefully tugged flat onto his back, mindful of Ella’s plea for silence.   
  
“Sorry, pal,” the other voice apologized thickly. The sweetly graveled voice that took the edge off his pain. The voice that made his whole body want to curl in its direction.   
  
Bucky.   
  
“Your leg was being crushed by the dash, but I had to pull it away slow to keep the noise down,” he murmured, his breath tickling Steve’s ear. His mind catalogued the difference in size and texture of the hand that petted his hair and face. Bucky’s hand. He ignored the pains that flared in his neck as he turned into the touch and sighed.   
  
“Yeah, I know, pal; you always liked that when you were sick as a kid.” Bucky kept petting him. He wanted to sink back below, but the trepidation in his friend’s voice caused something to trill sharply inside his chest. “Dunno how fast that serum of yours is working, but anything you can do to move it along would be good right now, Stevie. We’re really sittin’ ducks here.”    
  
There was a gentle pat to his cheek. “C’mon, Steve. Open your eyes, okay? C’mon, Cap.”   
  
The petulant kid that was Steve wanted to ignore the order and sleep, but the man that answered to “Cap” knew he didn’t have that luxury. Bucky would no more leave him behind than he would leave Bucky… and they still had an objective to complete.   
  
Steve fluttered his eyes, and finally managed to open them. A soft exhale of relief sounded near his ear, and Bucky’s face moved into his line of sight.   
  
“Hey you,” Bucky whispered past his smile. “You have some ridiculous eyelashes, you know that? Are those serum-enhanced too?”   
  
The teasing question confused Steve, but it wasn’t unwelcome. Just the opposite. Steve blinked slowly as he stared up at Bucky, memorizing lines, curves, and colors as if he’d never done so before.   
  
“No… Used to tease me ‘bout ‘em before…”   
  
The corner of Bucky’s mouth quirked higher at the sound of Steve’s voice. “With good reason, punk… Can you start trying to move things, Steve? Little at a time…? Ella, can you reach that water bottle? Are there napkins still back there that you can get to?”   
  
“Yeah, Bucky… Just a sec…”   
  
“Y’okay…? Ella…?” he asked, his head spinning a little as the influx of blood left it and returned to its normal route through his body.   
  
“Both good,” Bucky nodded, his diction reverting back to his thick Brooklyn slurring. “Belts an’ bags. Wonderful inventions, Didn’ do you a damn bit of good though.”   
  
“M’okay,” Steve grunted softly.

  
“Yeah, not so much at the moment,” Bucky chided him, “but you will be. Jus’ keep at it, pal.”   
  
Steve began systematically twitching muscles starting with his fingers, then along his arms. Nothing brought back the crippling pain of before, so he moved on to his torso. There were prickles of pain as muscles in his back protested, but he could deal with it. He’d had worse.   
  
A dampened napkin brushed over the side of his face, and Steve gave a little sigh at the soothing touch. He forced his eyes back open and re-focused his attention on the muscles in his legs as Bucky gently mopped at his temple and cheek.   
  
“You had some cuts from the glass,” he murmured, “but they’ve closed up now. Just getting the blood off ya so they won’t smell it.”   
  
“Okay,” Steve gritted as he moved his thigh. He couldn’t see any damage to his uniform, but his view without disrupting Bucky’s task was limited. “W’happened?”   
  
“Sideswiped,” Bucky answered as he poured a little of the water over Steve’s short locks to clean them of blood. “Someone on the run like us. Blew the intersection and hit on your side. Must’ve killed him and turned him ‘cause he’s gone… Not sure why he didn’t try to eat us though…”   
  
“M’be you’re not ‘is type, Buck,” Steve managed to crack, feeling the pain in his leg easing off a little.    
  
“Now there’s the smartass I know and love,” Bucky quipped as his eyes scanned the back of the Tahoe.   


“Newly turned,” Ella whispered, rustling quietly around beyond Steve’s head. “Might’ve smelled us, but couldn’t find us… If he had, he’d still be here trying to get to us.”   
  
“Comforting,” Bucky huffed. “We can’t walk with noisy bags, so put what you can into your backpack if you can find it. We’ll lift another SUV, but I don’t want any noise until we find one.”   
  
“There’s a Kaiser Permanente three blocks up,” Ella called softly. “Good bet there’s one in their parking garage. Even if people evacuated, there could be hospital transports left behind.”   
  
“If there are infected there, they wouldn’t go for their vehicles anyway,” Bucky grimaced over the mixed blessing that would be.   
  
“Yeah, that too,” Ella muttered.   
  
“I can move,” Steve breathed, feeling a bit claustrophobic in the mutilated Chevy.   
  
“Okay, Stevie,” Bucky nodded, shooting quick glances outside the SUV to check their surroundings. “Nice an’ easy, okay?”   
  
“Copy that,” Steve muttered as he began to slowly wriggle himself toward the window Bucky was crawling through. When he was clear, he held out his hands for Steve’s.   
  
“I can do it,” Steve groused, but Bucky wiggled his fingers patiently.   
  
“Uh huh, but this is quicker. C’mon Steve.”   
  
“I’m okay,” Steve hissed impatiently, his old temperament kicking in because of his discomfort feeling too close to that time in his life that was pre-war.   
  


“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that,” Bucky lamented, then turned his tone sharp. “Shut up and gimme your fucking hands Rogers.”   
  
Steve growled but complied. The growl turned into something more strangled as his back and thigh strongly stated their displeasure at being moved. Wisely, Bucky kept his I-told-you-so to himself as he pulled Steve from the wreck, then did the same for Ella.   
  
“Keep watch,” he murmured, then crawled back into the Chevy for his rifle and Steve’s shield. Steve rolled slowly onto his side, and then onto his hands and knees. His muscles were throbbing as they healed themselves, and some deep aches were probably bones that fractured in the crash. It was pain he was familiar with though, and he could work his way through it well enough not to hinder their progress much. Hopefully there would be a suitable vehicle in the parking structure. That kind of luck would be nice for a change.   
  


Finally regaining his feet, Steve took a moment to get his bearings while Bucky did a thorough check of his rifle. He noticed the smudge of blood below Bucky’s left ear, and leaned over to brush his hair back. He only caught a glimpse of a long, but healing gash before Bucky stepped back and gently pushed his hand away.   
  
“It’s nothing, pal. Don’t worry ‘bout it.”   
  
“There still blood going down your neck, Buck.”   
  
“Ella can help me get it wiped off once we’re inside a moving vehicle again, okay?” Bucky wouldn’t meet his eyes, which set off all kinds of warnings in his head.   
  
“Stop it, Bucky,” Steve whispered, causing Bucky’s eyes to dart upward and then at their immediate surroundings.   
  
“I am fine,” he answered Steve, enunciating each word sharply. “Can you walk okay?”   
  
“Yeah,” Steve snapped. “Just fine… Like you, right?”   
  
Bucky’s lips pressed tightly together, and his eyes darkened before he answered.   
  
“Right.” He turned his back to Steve and began walking in the direction of Kaiser Permanente. Steve looked to his left where Ella started to shuffle after Bucky. He took up a slow, limping walk to keep pace with her.   
  
“Your leg-”   
  
“Just stiff and sore,” she quietly reassured him. “You really did get the worst of it. He was in a panic, Steve, so let’s catch up to him so you can smooth over snapping at him, okay?”   
  
Steve would have normally tried to defend himself and his concern for Bucky’s well-being, but he was so tired of tension and bickering. So many parts of him ached that he figured his heart didn’t have to be one of them.   
  
“Yeah, okay.”   
  
They picked up their pace, and Bucky only turned his head a fraction to acknowledge Steve as he drew alongside. His eyes looked more grey than blue in the low glow of the street lights. Streaks of pink were finally showing in the sky, and Steve welcomed the approach of dawn. He was ready for the chill to leave the air and for Bucky’s eyes to look blue again.   
  
“Sorry I snapped at ya, Buck,” he murmured humbly, staring at the edge of his shield where the paint had been scuffed in several places. “Just don’t like the thought of you hurt… or being zombie bait.”   
  
Bucky cast a sidelong glance at him, clearly surprised by such a fast apology without some type of defensive opening gambit.   
  
“S’okay,” he muttered almost beneath his breath. “We’re just gettin’ it left and right. Bound to make us a little grouchy.”   
  
“M’not grouchy,” Steve frowned until Bucky shot him a full-bodied look that called utter bullshit. “Okay… maybe a little grouchy.” He reached back stiffly and hooked his shield onto his harness. “I’ve just never had so much go so wrong on a such a straight-forward mission. I feel like we’re making the wrong calls and are at each other’s throats in a way I don’t understand.”   
  
“Not at your throat, Stevie,” Bucky muttered, glancing down at the ground before going back to his visual sweeping of the area. “We got some things to clear the air over, and I hate that we can’t yet. I want time and privacy for that, and we got zip on both.”   
  
“Yeah, I know,” Steve agreed. “I’ll try to keep my temper in check… and I’ll try not to mother hen you. I know you hate that.”   
  
“About as much as you used to,” Bucky smirked, then lightly slapped Steve on the back. He licked at his chapped lips and darted a slightly sheepish look Steve’s way.   
  
“I’ll try not to be a moody asshole,” he acquiesced, “and I’ll try not to treat you like a kid, and freak out when you do stupid shit.”   
  
“What about being a jackass,” Steve fired back with a grin. “Is that covered in this truce too?”   
  
A gorgeous smile finally returned to Bucky’s lips as his chin dropped slightly. “Don’t need a truce, punk. We weren’t fighting…” He tossed a cocky yet charming smirk over his shoulder at Ella. “More like pissing on each other’s tree is all.”   
  
“I’m taller than you so I can piss higher,” Steve grinned with a wink back at Ella. “Do I win?”   
  
“Maybe if you were five again,” Bucky quipped with a soft snort. “Could piss circles around you and carve my initials in the tree at the same time, Rogers. I win.”   
  
“Maybe if you carved his initials alongside,” Ella huffed behind them. “Me…? I’m back here saving the world from two idiots right now. I win. Boom. Done, motherfuckers.”   
  
Bucky’s jaw dropped at her crass, attitude-laden declaration, and Steve stifled his laughter behind his hand as they approached the block where the Kaiser facility was. When they reached the building, Bucky started toward the parking structure, but Ella started for the doors labeled with clinic hours. Bucky pointed toward the spattering of visible vehicles, but Ella winced and pointed to her leg. Steve drew a constricted breath at the fact that her pant leg was now damp and dark with blood.   
  
“I need some stitches. Clinic will have them. Hopefully it’s deserted.”   
  
“Why didn’t you say something,” Steve frowned, upset that she had to be in a fair amount of pain from anything that would bleed like that.   
  
“Because I didn’t want either of you trying to carry me.” She glared at them both. “It doesn’t need to be plastic surgeon perfect. Quick and dirty closure… with as little actual dirt as possible. I can probably also find a set of scrubs to change into.”   
  
Bucky gave a long sigh, but Steve gave him props for not rolling his eyes. “C’mon. Cross stitch time.”    
  
Apparently Kaiser employees were either wise enough to lock up and hole up at home with their families, or they’d all been turned and released into the open air to go perpetuate the problem. Either way, the halls were eerily empty. Steve wasn’t about to knock it or question it too much. Quiet was just fine by him.   
  
They found the storage room for the clinic, and Bucky quickly picked the lock on the door. Ella immediately limped past each clear cabinet until she saw what she needed.    
  
“Lidocaine,” she sighed and pointed to the vials. Bucky didn’t bother with a lock pick this time. He gripped the metal latch handle and ripped it free. As he plucked the vial from the shelf, he smirked back at Steve.   
  
“Kaiser Permanente… Lankershim & Weddington… North Hollywood, California… Make the check to Harold Marceau’s attention since he’s listed at the top of the board of directors plaque.”   
  
“Hilarious,” Steve groaned, tossing a small suture kit to Bucky. “I drive better, but you always sewed better. Hop to it, Barnes.”   
  
“Hey, I’m not a super soldier.” Ella had hopped upon the counter with a pair of procured shears and a safety syringe dangling from her lips. She began cutting away the leg of her jeans. “No one’s touching me until I get this numbed.”   
  
Bucky ripped open the suture kit and set the items out while Steve stepped next to Ella and opened her backpack. He pulled a bottle of Gatorade out and drank half of it down before handing it to Bucky. He looked anywhere but at Ella as she systematically poked her thigh with the loaded syringe.   
  
“Bucky… get that jacket off so Steve can get the blood off of you.”   
  
It felt like it came out of nowhere and it startled Steve. Ella didn’t look up as she said it. The way she said it suggested that she wasn’t going to take any bullshit protests over it either. He shifted his stunned gaze to Bucky, whose mouth was hanging open. If his best friend had any initial ideas about arguing, he apparently thought better of it because he started popping the snaps on his leather jacket.    
  
“Wise man,” Steve murmured. He looked toward the hallway. “There’s gotta be a vending machine out there somewhere. I could-”   
  
“No.” Bucky pulled the single sleeve from his right arm and deposited the jacket onto the counter beside Ella. “There’s saline over there. It’ll work. We stay together. Wasn’t that the argument before?”   
  
“Okay, okay,” Steve shrugged, holding his hands up for ceasefire. He opened the clear-fronted cabinet that held pouches and nozzled bottles of saline. Ignoring the pouches for the ease of the bottles, he plunked four down on the counter and waited while Bucky pulled off his shirt.    
  
“Rinse what you can outta that while I stitch her up?”   
  
“That’ll be kinda uncomfortable, don’t you think?” Steve raised the question without stopping to think that he was addressing the former Winter Soldier. Bucky looked at him like he’d gone soft.   
  
“Oh you sweet summer child,” he purred, referencing their latest show marathon. It got a soft snort out of Ella. Apparently she was a Game of Thrones fan too. “It’s already sweaty. At least once the blood’s out it won’t dry sticky.”   
  
“Laundry service coming up,” Steve conceded. He pulled several boxes of gauze and dressings from the cabinets. Some of it they’d use for Ella, but the majority of it ended up wadded up and doused in saline to wipe away the dried blood from Bucky’s neck and back.   
  
“Think this’ll be okay to get what we missed on your arm?”   
  
“Thanks, but it’s all flaking off. Doesn’t bother me now.” There was enough of an edge to the words to tell Steve that the statement wasn’t entirely true, but there wasn’t enough discomfort in Bucky’s tone for it to be worth making an issue of.   
  
Steve’s first swipes with the soaked gauze were hesitant, but he firmed them up when Bucky tipped his head forward. He remained still as Steve gently worked the dried blood from the roots of his hair, but his voice sounded half annoyed and half amused.   
  
“I’m not bone china, Steve.”   
  
“What, you want me to find some Ajax and scrub it out with that instead?” Steve asked with a roll of his eyes. “Just because you’re not delicate doesn’t mean I need to manhandle you.”   
  
“Ever the gentleman-”   
  
“Bucky…”   
  
Steve couldn’t tell if Bucky looked up at the quiet warning Ella gave him, but that tone was hard to ignore. She gave Bucky a pleading look, and Steve felt the muscles beneath his fingers tense, then relax. Whatever silent facial response Bucky gave her, she seemed content enough with it to return to her previous silence.    
  
Steve wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He liked that they seemed to have reached an acceptance and understanding of each other, but Steve felt a little left out of the loop. If he was fair, he supposed that Ella might feel the same way at times when he and Bucky spoke without words, or cracked one of their lifetime supply of inside jokes, but that was a closeness he didn’t really want to share with anyone else. That was pure jealousy rearing its head, and Steve felt a little ashamed of it. How many times had Bucky given him closed-off, almost wounded looks when he faux-bickered with Sam or Natasha? He rarely did it now, but those first months after Bucky began to gain larger chunks of his memory had been tough. He’d felt like an interloper, an outsider to Steve’s circle where before he’d always been one in their club of two. It had taken Steve a lot of time and coaxing to make Bucky understand that his place in Steve’s life was ironclad. His absence had been agonized over, and now that he was back, Steve offered him carte blanche, just as before.   
  
“Okay, this is numb enough. Go for it.”   
  
Steve swallowed back his musings and binned the bloody gauze. He took up Bucky’s shirt as Bucky took up the antiseptic wipe to clean his hands off. He looked away as Bucky picked up the pre-threaded needle, not really wanting to see the makeshift procedure. Instead he focused on rinsing what blood he could from Bucky’s shirt.    
  
“You notice that they congregate?”   
  
Steve and Bucky both glanced up at Ella’s seeming non sequitur, then at each other. Both shook their heads, but the more Steve thought back, the more he realized that she was right.   
  
“It’s almost like they have a hive mind. They have strength in numbers. One or two is too easy to get rid of, but en masse, you’re not going to get away from them, especially now that they’re moving faster… Maybe it’s chemical like bees and ants...”    
  
The idea that they might have some type of silent communication was too disturbing to comment upon. The room fell silent again and Steve suddenly noticed that he had blood spatter on himself. Once he’d wrung out what excess moisture he could from Bucky’s shirt, he started in on his own uniform. He used the saline liberally, knowing it wouldn’t penetrate the nomex-kevlar blend. By the time he’d finished, Bucky was securing a bandage around Ella’s thigh.    
  
She looked a little queasy as she slid off the counter to the floor, and he and Bucky both put hands out to steady her. She inhaled through her nose and held a hand up to tell them she was fine.   
  
“I’m good. Let’s look in the next supply room for some scrubs.”   
  
The supply room was a bust, however the locker room down the hall wasn’t. Bucky and Steve yanked open lockers until they found one with bottoms Ella could wear. She ended up layering two pair since the fabric was thin.     
  
They’d almost reached the elevator when Steve caught movement in his peripheral. He had his shield up immediately, but the force of the impact sent him sideways. He stumbled and fell with his shield being the only thing to keep the snapping teeth of the hisser at bay. It had leverage on him, but not the coordination needed to use it, and Steve hurled it away from him. True to Ella’s earlier observation, Bucky was dealing with a hisser of his own. As Steve smashed his shield into the skull of his attacker, he heard Ella cry out, but Bucky had already killed the other three hissers that had joined the party.    
  
He was about to ask if Ella was hurt when she turned and ran from them. Bucky darted a confused look Steve’s way before he took off after her. They caught up and paced her back to the supply room where she began tearing frantically through the supplies.   
  
“Ella, what are you doing? We need to go before more show up.”   
  
“Norpace… uh… Procan… Duraquin or Quinidex… Look to see if you find any of those,” she muttered, pulling out boxes to read the names, then letting them fall to the floor when they weren’t what she was looking for. “Needs to be liquid form though… gotta inject it so it’ll work fast.”   
  
“Why? What are they?” Bucky hadn’t moved yet, but Steve started on the other side of the room. There was a strange expression behind Bucky’s eyes that Steve didn’t like. He tried not to think about it as he started looking through the cabinets.   
  
“They slow your heart down,” she answered, not giving detail.   
  
“Why d’you need that?!”   
  
“God, just look, will you?”   
  
After a minute or so of boxes falling to the floor and vials being shoved around, Steve thought he might have found one. “You said Procan?”   
  
He held the vial up to show Ella. When she turned to look, there were tear tracks over her cheeks. She squinted at the glass vial, then yanked a fresh syringe from the other side of the room before coming back to Steve.   
  
“Ella, what the hell is going on?” he asked, gripping her arm just enough to get her to look at him. She stared at him with haunted eyes as she turned her arm for him to see the bite mark on the inside of her wrist.   
  
“Oh no… Ella, no…”   
  
“What?” Bucky turned from the cabinet he was ransacking. His eyes dropped to where Ella’s arm was held up for Steve to see, and his face fell. He closed his eyes for a second before turning away, unable to meet Ella’s eyes.   
  
Ella gently dislodged her arm from Steve’s grip and took the vial from him with shaking hands. She stabbed it with the syringe, pulled several CCs from it, then stabbed herself in the shoulder with it. The effect of the drug was quick. Ella’s body sagged, then slid down the counter front to sit on the floor.   
  
As Bucky braced his hands on the counter and hung his head between his shoulders, Steve crouched down in front of Ella.   
  
“Look, we’re gonna get you back to New York, okay? Bruce and Tony can figure this out. Maybe they can reverse it with the samples you took.”   
  
Ella smiled at him, but her eyes were sad. “You know you can’t put me on a plane. It’s not safe. You wouldn’t even let me take samples from the dead one in the elevator. You said yourself, Steve; it would be irresponsible. You two need to get the samples back as fast as you can… which will be a lot faster now that I’m not slowing you down.”   
  
Steve frowned and shook his head. “No, we’re not leaving you here.”   
  
“You don’t have a choice, Steve. Bucky, tell him.”   
  
Bucky didn’t say a word, nor did he move from his spot. Ella closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the counter. They were starting to hear shuffling in the hallway. It wasn’t many now, but it probably would be soon.   
  
“Okay… I’m too chickenshit to shoot myself, and I’m not about to have one of you do it… so let’s just Red Dawn this.”   
  
Bucky hunched his shoulders, but he finally straightened and turned toward them. His eyes were dark with suspicion.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Red Dawn…? The movie…?” Ella opened her eyes and looked between them. “Patrick Swayze? Remake with that guy that looks like Thor…? Jeffrey Dean Morgan… who’s in that movie with a guy that looks like you? Chris something or other...”   
  
Steve had no idea what she was going on about. He blinked over at Bucky in confusion, but his friend didn’t seem any more clued in than he was. Ella sighed and shook her head. She grew sadder and rubbed sluggishly at her face.   
  
“Here’s how it goes: Bucky gives me a grenade that’s pressure sensitive. I hold onto it while you two get out of here. When I die, my hand’ll go slack and it’ll explode. I don’t turn into one of those things, and I take a whole lot of them out with me when I go.”   
  
“Ella, no,” Steve whispered, shaking his head. His heart hurt in a way it hadn’t in a long time. There had to be some miracle, eleventh-hour solution that they just weren’t seeing yet. He turned pleading eyes to Bucky, but Bucky had mostly shut down. He stared at Steve for a long moment before pulling a long, silver cylinder from his belt. He kneeled down next to Steve and placed the grenade into Ella’s hand, centering it so the two black buttons on it were covered by her thumb and forefinger. He didn’t put pressure against her fingers, but he held his hand over hers.   
  
“Promise me that you guys’ll go see a fucking movie more often,” she sniffled, fixing them each with a stern gaze. “Get a damn hobby and stop living for just being soldiers… okay?”   
  
Steve only nodded, his throat closed past being able to speak. Beside him, Bucky had his eyes lowered, but tears were threatening to spill in spite of his steeled expression. He didn’t acknowledge Ella’s request, but he wasn’t ignoring it either.

  
“Everyone’s gonna know how brave you were,” Steve told her somberly. “I’m going to make sure of it.” The words felt so hollow to his ears, but it still felt like something he needed to say.   
  
“I’m not brave,” Ella corrected him. “There just wasn’t any other choice. You both kept me moving.”   
  
“No, he’s right.” Bucky spoke low in his throat, obviously uncomfortable with what he was saying, but Steve saw the veiled apology in Bucky’s eyes. “We know women who could kick our asses. You’d fit right in with ‘em.”   
  
Ella seemed stunned by his words. Fresh tears rolled over her cheeks and she closed her eyes. “Get out of here,” she commanded quietly, her voice growing rough. “Feeling sick… so you don’t have much time.”   
  
Swallowing hard, Bucky tightened his grip on Ella’s hand. All three of them flinched when the grenade beeped loudly, a tiny red light blinking slowly near the heel of her hand.   
  
“Ella-”   
  
“You don’t need to worry about me now,” she snapped, opening her eyes again to glare at Steve. “Worry about each other. You’re not out of this yet.” She turned hardened eyes on Bucky. “Remember what I told you. Don’t wait, Bucky.”   
  
Steve didn’t know what that meant, but Bucky gave a short nod before standing up. “Steve, come on. We gotta go,” he rasped.   
  
Steve slowly stood and picked up his shield. Bucky picked up Ella’s backpack and had slung it over his shoulders. They didn’t need much of what was left in there, but neither had anywhere on their uniforms that was big enough to fit the blood samples inside. The backpack looked so much smaller on Bucky than it had on Ella.   
  
“I’ll find your godson and make sure he and his family are safe,” Steve offered, suddenly remembering the reason Ella had the commemorative ball bat in her room. Ella smiled up at him, but shook her head.   
  
“Thank you… but Nick had them picked up before he sent you two after me.” Her voice fell to a faint whisper. “Go. Hurry.”   
  
“They’re not getting any fewer out there, pal,” Bucky called quietly, prompting Steve to finally listen. He rested his palm to the top of Ella’s head for a moment before turning for the door. Everything he still wanted to say just didn’t feel right, and he didn’t think she would appreciate him lingering any longer. She didn’t want them seeing her falter. Not this time. Bucky was ready to honor that. So would Steve.   
  
If it felt like all the fight had left him in the supply room, it returned with a vengeance the moment he and Bucky stepped back into the hallway. As Bucky closed the door, Steve threw himself at the group of nine with a seething violence worse than his rampage back in the tower. He’d saved Bucky that time, but Ella being bitten felt like a personal failure on his part, and he was going to atone for it by taking out every hisser he saw between here and the airport. It was Bucky that pulled him back as more started to fill the hallway.   
  
“Steve, no! We don’t have time to wipe ‘em all out. We’re on the clock!” He dragged Steve down the hall to the elevator and threw him inside. Once they reached the first floor, they sprinted for the doors to the outside. Steve thought they’d still try for a vehicle, but Bucky kept running.   
  
“No time! C’mon!”   
  
They weren’t that far away when the first rumbling explosion sounded. Both men turned as secondary explosions went off, likely the chemicals and stored gases that clinical facilities always had on hand. Another, louder explosion went off, and things began to fly through the air toward them. Oxygen tanks shot off like missiles overhead as their seals were compromised. Steve felt something hit his shoulder, sharp and searing. It knocked him down, but Bucky was right there and hauling him up by his shoulder harness.    
  
They ran for a solid twenty minutes before Steve had enough. The running was no big deal for him, even with his shoulder feeling like it was on fire, but he still wanted to throw up. There weren’t any hissers nearby, if the lack of smell was anything to go by, so Steve came to a halt and hunched over, resting his hands to his knees. He heard Bucky doubling back to stand next to him when the nausea washed over him. He staggered to the sidewalk and threw up next to a storm drain. Mostly it was dry heaves since his body had already processed the meager meal they’d swiped from the Arco station.    
  
He stayed hunched over as a hand began to rub at his back. His uniform kept him from feeling much beyond the hint of pressure, but it was enough to throw him back in time for a moment. He closed his eyes and let himself remember how that same hand would soothe him through choking fits brought on by violent coughing. It should have been a horrible memory, but that touch had kept him from giving up.   
  
“C’mon, Stevie. I don’t see any cars worth lifting anywhere close, and you need a break… We both do. Looks like everyone’s evacuated this area so let’s check that two-story over there. If it’s empty, we’ll try to check in, take a breather, then raid the fridge before we head back out.”   
  
“I’m alright, Buck,” he answered, even though he felt anything but. He didn’t straighten; he wanted Bucky’s touch still. He needed that grounding.   
  
“I know you are, but we should rinse out that cut on your shoulder anyway. It’s already starting to heal but let’s get the blood off.”    
  
A little bit of time to regroup and check in with Fury sounded like a sensible move. Steve knew his head wasn’t on straight and it needed to be. The simple, straight-forward things Bucky suggested would help him get back into the right headspace.   
  
“Okay,” he muttered. Bucky patted him on the back and they walked to the blue and white bungalow the next block over. Bucky had shouldered his rifle and had his Sig out instead. He kept his right hand to Steve’s back as they walked. It felt strange to Steve, but Bucky was in protective mode and he had no real desire to give him any reason to back off. The connection was sorely needed.    
  
They didn’t have to knock to see if anyone was still holed up inside because the door was ajar. Bucky nodded his approval when Steve pulled his own Sig, and the two of them carefully cleared the house. There were no hissers inside, so they bolted everything down to lock themselves in. Bucky placed the furniture downstairs in ways that it obstructed walkways through the rooms, and he found a bag of tortilla chips in the kitchen pantry that he scattered about the floor. It seemed like overkill to Steve, but this was Bucky’s area more than his. If he thought it was a good idea, Steve wasn’t going to argue.   
  
Once Bucky was satisfied that they had a suitable barrier between them and the outside world, they retreated to the upstairs bathroom so they could clean up Steve’s shoulder and rinse out his shirt. Steve stripped down to his bare torso, and leaned over the sink to wash the soured taste from his mouth. Bucky took a towel from the small cabinet above the toilet and wet half of it to wipe down Steve’s shoulder. The edges of the gash were still lifting so he found some first aid tape and placed a few pieces of it over the wound to better hold it shut. It was deep, but Steve’s body was already mending itself. In a day or two, there would be nothing left but a faint stripe across his skin.   
  
Bucky placed the last piece of tape as Steve finished rinsing out the torn section of his shirt. Rather than withdraw though, Bucky left his hand resting to Steve’s back. He almost didn’t want to stand up straight, relishing the warmth of Bucky’s hand against his skin. He met Bucky’s eyes in the mirror, and the brunet blinked and withdrew.   
  
“I’ll call Fury… if my phone’s still working.”   
  
“Might be a charger around here. We could look to see.”   
  
“Yeah, maybe.” Bucky pulled his phone and stared down at it. “Fuckin’ Junior knows his shit, huh?” He held the phone up for Steve to see that, in spite of being cracked and bashed to hell, it was still on with a strong signal.   
  
“Yeah, just don’t tell him that. It’ll make him completely unbearable.”   
  
The conversation with Fury didn’t go well at all. Steve was angry that Fury didn’t seem nearly upset enough about Ella’s death, nor was he seem particularly helpful about getting them back to New York.   
  
“Until I get you cleared to leave, your wheels do not leave the ground. I’m already in no small hell back here because you fucked up the Bank Tower!”   
  
“Talk to Junior. His grenades.”   
  
“I’m talking to  you  Barnes! You’re supposed to know the weapons you use!”   
  
“I do. He changed ‘em. Talk. To. Him.”   
  
“When are you getting us cleared,” Steve asked, the irritation oozing from his voice.   
  
“I’ll have your green light no later than 1:00. I’ll have contact with the President again by that time, and will use it if I can’t get Governor Brown to permit your takeoff. He’s concerned about possible complicity in spreading the virus if one of you picked it up.”   
  
“That’s ridiculous,” Steve scoffed. “We have the samples Ella needed to get back. We should have priority clearance.”   
  
“You should but you don’t,” Nick stated calmly, “which means you stay put until I get the red tape sorted. Wilson will have his feet down in Vegas by 11:00. He’ll give you air cover to the airport, then fly back with you. Activate your trackers so he can find you. Hunker down until then. No heroics. I need you both back here in one piece.”   
  
“Done,” Bucky snapped and clicked off the phone. He tossed it onto the counter and walked into the hallway to pace. Steve slung his wet shirt over the shower door to dry, then stepped into the hallway. He watched his friend scowl at the carpet, but remained quiet, knowing nothing he said would ease Bucky’s anger toward Fury.   
  
One thing was bothering Steve though, and he couldn’t remain silent about it.   
  
“Buck…? What did Ella mean back there… about not waiting?”   
  
Bucky stopped just shy of Steve and stared at him as if he’d been struck. His jaw was slightly slack, and his lips parted from the angle. The scariest part of it was that tears started to well up in Bucky’s eyes as he shut his mouth and chewed at his lip.   
  
“Bucky…? What did she tell you?”   
  
Steve’s brain shorted completely out when Bucky surged forward suddenly, took Steve’s face into his hands, and kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TAG: Character death


	9. "And none of them were you."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [Shaish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaish/pseuds/Shaish) for a big chunk of proofreading and also for her input. It helped me a lot!

At some point, Bucky was going to have to confess his guilt. Ella was right there with him when she was bitten. He should have protected her, but he’d had half his attention focused upon Steve. He knew Steve could handle himself, but when he went down, Bucky’s mind couldn’t stop screaming for Steve to _get up_. Steve was stronger by far, but the leverage the zombie had on him was enough to close Bucky’s throat. By the time Steve was back on his feet, three more had descended upon Bucky and Ella.   
  
He’d known it would happen. He’d told her as much, and once he told Steve, it would never be the same again. He’d failed, and missions were not to be failed. He’d be punished and-

No… Not _punishment_. That was before. He wasn’t there now. Steve wouldn’t do that.   
  
But he’d be disappointed. That was even worse.   
  
When Bucky was eight, his uncle on his mother’s side took him hunting upstate. He had a cabin up there, and Bucky vividly remembered how there was always a cold spot behind the northwest corner. The sun never managed to touch the spot, so walking through it always felt like a lost soul had brushed past him.   
  
Steve’s disappointment felt a lot like that one lonely corner of his uncle’s cabin.     
  
Fury’s timeline had them sitting idle for too long. Steve would want to talk about Ella, and Bucky wouldn’t be able to lie about it. Steve’s love felt so close, right there within his grasp. He was sure Steve had been dropping hints, subtle gestures and comments that Bucky hadn’t wanted to read into too much, but was holding onto nonetheless. He kept tucking them away for closer inspection once the mission was complete. The flashback to their pre-war days had reminded him of how close they’d been before, but he’d still had enough distance from it to see it more objectively than before. He was so certain, and all the little things Steve kept doing just fed into that certainty.   
  
Now he was going to lose it all. Steve would never revoke his friendship, but knowing how Bucky had failed would prevent it from ever growing into more. How could it not? The mission was all three of them, and his tunnel vision had gotten Ella killed.   
  
“Buck…? What did Ella mean back there… about not waiting?”   
  
Bucky stopped pacing as his mind screeched to a halt and his stomach clenched. He gaped at Steve, wishing he could have picked any other topic for just a little while. He wanted just that little bit of reprieve before the chill closed in on him. Tears blurred his view of Steve, and he chewed at his lip to try to stave them off.   
  
“Bucky…? What did she tell you?”   
  
Guilt could wait. Confessions could wait. Disappointment could wait.   
  
If he was going to have to face that, he was going to take a memory with him to cling to first. Bucky stumbled forward and took Steve’s face into his hands. He closed his eyes to how wide Steve’s beautiful blues became as he leaned in and claimed a fleeting piece of joy for himself.   
  
Steve’s lips were still damp from rinsing his mouth out, and Bucky tasted a hint of the toothpaste he’d pushed across his teeth with his finger. The most amazing thing about Steve’s mouth though, the very best aspect of it, was the way his lips parted so willingly for Bucky when he’d nudged them gently with his tongue. The explosion of taste and heat when he dipped inside was enough to wring a desperate whimper from his throat. He crowded Steve against the hallway wall, and pressed himself fully against the warmth he’d always craved.   
  
Steve’s hands rose to cup Bucky’s face in a mirror of his own, and he felt Steve gently pulling back. Bucky closed his eyes and whimpered again, terrified of stopping or even lessening his grip upon Steve.   
  
“Buck…?”   
  
Bucky pulled Steve’s face down and pressed their foreheads together so he wouldn’t have to meet Steve’s eyes yet. His whole body was shivering and his teeth were on the verge of chattering as he panted softly, trying to breathe in as much of Steve’s air as he could.   
  
“Bucky… could you look at me…?”   
  
Swallowing hard and shifting his head slowly from side to side, Bucky refused to break the contact or look directly at Steve.   
  
“Just tell me this is okay,” he rasped, his voice cracking under the strain of being so close, and still fearing rejection. “Please, Steve.”   
  
Steve’s thumb stroked the skin of Bucky’s nape almost too tenderly for Bucky to be able to stand it before his hands slid downward. He pulled Bucky protectively into his arms and nodded, nudging along the side of Bucky’s nose with his own. He brushed his lips so lightly over Bucky’s that they barely touched, but Steve’s breath was warm against Bucky’s mouth as he spoke.   
  
“Yeah,” he whispered. “ _Finally_ … it’s okay...”   
  
His eyes opening in surprise, Bucky shifted backward just enough to look carefully into Steve’s eyes. “Finally…?”   
  
“Finally.” Steve dipped his head a fraction and blushed, even though he kept his grip around Bucky. He stared at Bucky’s chest as he brought one hand around to rest it lightly over Bucky’s heart. “I’ve been… hoping… For a while now, but I didn’t think you-”  
  
Feeling like a dam had broken between them, Bucky surged forward again and claimed Steve’s mouth with hungry little growls and whines. Steve answered every aggressive lick and nip and swipe with a tender return of his own, all while keeping Bucky tightly wrapped in the safety of his arms. It should have been mismatched and awkward, but this was who they’d always been; one raging while the other quietly soothed their ache. The only thing that changed was who took up which mantle each time.   
  
This time Steve was the rock that Bucky crashed into until he’d worn himself out enough that the trembling started to ease off. His body still ebbed and surged against Steve’s, reveling in the way he fit so snugly against Steve’s torso. He shuddered when Steve dropped his lips to the crook of his shoulder to kiss up the line of his neck.   
  
“We’re not doing this the first time against a wall,” Steve groaned softly while nipping at his earlobe.   
  
For a moment, panic exploded through Bucky’s gut, but Steve turned him slightly in his arms, and began placing tender kisses to Bucky’s temple and cheek while he walked them into what looked like a guest bedroom. Steve would probably feel a little guilty about using someone’s space like this when they were only supposed to be seeking refuge, but Bucky was more concerned with finding his own brand of shelter. He burrowed his face into Steve’s neck and closed his eyes, trusting Steve to guide them where they needed to go.   
  
“Are you okay, Buck…?”   
  
Bucky nodded against Steve without speaking, but apparently it wasn’t good enough. Steve pushed Bucky back a little to sit on the edge of the bed, then he kneeled between Bucky’s legs and attempted to look into his eyes. When Bucky tried to distract him by going in for another kiss, Steve dodged and spoke just sharply enough to stop Bucky’s actions.   
  
“Bucky. I need you to look at me.”   
  
Running a shaking hand over his face, Bucky couldn’t help but do as Steve asked. He knew desperation must be showing in his eyes, but his nerves were too raw and exposed to hide it. Steve seemed saddened by what he saw in Bucky’s gaze, but he ran his hand over Bucky’s face and kept searching for answers.   
  
“Are you okay, Bucky?” He posed the question again in that familiar tone that settled into Bucky’s chest and gut, telling him that Steve needed him to be completely honest. Bucky stared into those vivid blue eyes, so wide with concern and… love… that he slowly shook his head.

“No,” he whispered. “I just wanna feel better… I always feel better with you…”   
  
He tangled his fingers into Steve’s hair and slowly tugged him forward. “Want you, Stevie. Always wanted you.” He pulled Steve closer and feathered kisses over his lips and jaw until he reached just shy of Steve’s ear.   
  
“Need you.”   
  
“Bucky…” His name rushed past Steve’s lips in a gust of warm air, and he felt strong arms wrap around his waist to pull them tightly together. Steve pressed his lips to Bucky’s throat, then buried his face against Bucky’s neck.   
  
“I’ve always needed you, Buck. I’ve always loved you.”   
  
Bucky felt like he couldn’t breathe past the tightness in his chest, but he managed to answer somehow.   
  
“Then get up here,” he gasped. “Shut up and get up here.”   
  
Steve Rogers could be ridiculously stubborn and a complete brat. Thank god this wasn’t one of those times. Bucky’s breath caught as Steve raised enough that his movement forced Bucky backward onto the bed. He scooted up the mattress with Steve slowly pursuing him, landing little bites along his neck and jaw. By the time Bucky was fully situated on the bed, Steve was hovering over him and in position to kiss him. Everything slowed down this time; Steve teased and coaxed little noises from Bucky’s throat as he grazed Bucky’s lips with his own.   
  
“Hey, Buck…”   
  
Bucky didn’t realize how tightly he had his eyes shut until Steve’s voice gently pried them open. When he looked up at Steve, he nearly hyperventilated. Bucky wasn’t one for prayer, but the way Steve looked down at him made Bucky want to offer up every incantation he could remember just to beg for that gaze to always be as full of concern and adoration as it was at that moment. It felt like summer sunshine, making Bucky’s face warm enough to bring color to his cheeks.   
  
He wanted so much to tell Steve how much he loved him; how he never wanted to leave Steve’s side, how growing into cantankerous old farts together sounded like the best thing life could ever offer. He couldn’t though. Bucky couldn’t bear the thought of uttering those words, and then having them pushed aside once he leveled with Steve.   
  
“Hey.” Steve’s voice again, this time even more gentle, encouraging Bucky to open more up to him than just guarded eyes. He pushed the hair from Bucky’s eyes, kissing each in turn.  
  
“Tell me what’s wrong, Bucky. Let me help.”   
  
Bucky tensed up, knowing that tone and that single-minded determination that colored Steve’s voice. He looked at Steve’s chest and realized with a start that he was missing the chance to touch and explore. In a last-ditch effort, Bucky slid his hands over Steve’s bare torso, trailing fingertips over dusky, taut nipples and along the ridges of his abs. Steve sucked in his breath and grabbed Bucky’s hands to still them.   
  
“God, I know you so well… Too well, because I know exactly what you’re doing. C’mon, Buck. No distracting me like that. We’ve been outta step and this is not a moment where I want that to be the case. Tell me… _please_.” Still on his knees between Bucky’s thighs, he pulled his body upright so he could better stand his ground. He rested his hands upon Bucky’s knees and squeezed. The gesture would have soothed Bucky more had he not been so heartbroken that Steve was going to force the issue.   
  
“We’re just gonna be worse once I tell you what… what I did,” Bucky sighed, pressing his fingers against his eyes as he felt the tension building behind them. “Can’t we just enjoy this first?”   
  
“No.” Steve shook his head, his eyes blinking slowly as he pulled Bucky’s hands away from his face to hold them again. “No more hiding. No more keeping things from each other. I’ve hated it, not being able to tell you everything I felt. I’ve hated feeling like I would lose everything if you found out, and didn’t feel the same. I wanna clear the air because, when I kiss you again, I wanna know it’s the first of too many to count… and I want you to feel the same thing. Nothing hanging over us. No more uncertainty.”   
  
He brought one of Bucky’s hands up to his heart, and Bucky felt how fast it thudded against his palm. “You’ve had my entire heart for so long, and you’re gonna have it until the day I die… but I know you well enough to know that you’re not going to believe that until we clear the air. So what is it you think you’ve done?”   
  
Bucky heard the gentle ribbing in Steve’s voice, like nothing Bucky said could shock him or sway him. Bucky inhaled slowly through his nose and sent up another prayer that Steve could stand by that particular conviction.

“Ella… it’s because of-”   
  
He didn’t get the chance to finish because Steve immediately covered his mouth and shook his head emphatically.   
  
“I’m not even going to let you say it, because it’s not true.” Steve kept his hand to Bucky’s mouth, though it rested too lightly to risk triggering Bucky. He started to shiver again as Steve leveled sternly upon him. “I had a feeling this was where your head was in the storage room. Bucky, I was there too. You were finishing one when three more were on you. You’re the best fighter I’ve ever seen, but you’re not omnipotent. I’m not going to let you blame yourself for Ella being bitten. She didn’t. Hell, she had such a soft spot for you that the last thing she did was make sure you’d tell me how you felt… I mean, that's what she kept at you about, right? She still wanted you to end up happy.”   
  
Buying just a second to compose himself, Bucky looked pointedly downward at Steve’s hand. Steve took the hint and moved his hand from Bucky’s mouth to his jaw. He couldn’t believe that Steve wasn’t upset with him; couldn’t allow himself to grasp that the fear eating away at him might have been unwarranted.   
  
“Said you were too concerned about pressuring me to make the first move… I was sure you weren’t into guys that way, but she kept on with pushing it…”   
  
“I never saw it as liking a guy over a girl. I only ever saw it as liking _you_. You were my whole world. You still are.” Steve pulled Bucky’s hand upward so he could rest his chin against Bucky’s knuckles. It felt like an electric current shot through his hand, up to his shoulder, and then straight to his stomach.   
  
“Even back then…? I didn’t remember wrong?”   
  
“What do you remember? Tell me,” Steve murmured past a smile, rolling his fingertips over the grooves in Bucky’s prosthetic. Looking down and wishing he could feel that touch upon his skin, Bucky tugged at the snaps of his jacket as he answered.   
  
“The flashback I had earlier… Remembered coming home from the dance hall to you being pissed off at me. You couldn’t tell me why. Told you I was gonna teach you to loosen up and have fun sometimes.”   
  
“No more sulking.” Steve’s memory was razor-sharp even before Rebirth, so it didn’t surprise Bucky that he remembered what had been said so quickly. What did surprise him was the way Steve’s eyes misted.   
  
“Yeah,” Bucky whispered with a slow nod of his head. “I think I started hoping a little bit myself after I remembered that. Hoping a lot...”   
  
Steve stared at him, then started helping Bucky out of his harness when his hands shook a little too much to unfasten the buckles.   
  
“I thought whatever you’d remembered up there was something bad. The way you froze up… I thought something had triggered you into remembering something HYDRA did-”   
  
Now Bucky was the one to shush Steve with his hand. He had to shut that topic down right away. “HYDRA and anything associated with that time of my life is off limits when we’re like this. They’re not going to taint this too.”   
  
“Okay, I can promise that,” Steve assured him after he’d pulled Bucky’s hand away. He brought it right back though, so he could press a kiss to Bucky’s fingers. Bucky responded by wriggling free of his shoulder holster. He gazed up at Steve, needing to make absolutely sure that Steve was seeing him clearly.   
  
“Steve, three shouldn’t have been a problem.”   
  
“I deem your change of topic terribly inappropriate in a foreplay situation.” Steve muttered as he tugged at Bucky’s jacket, then started pulling his shirt free of his fatigues. Bucky grabbed his hands to stop him as he frowned upward.   
  
“Steve-”   
  
“Nope. You put the rule out there. I’m making sure it’s followed to the letter. No HYDRA. No sulking. No misplaced guilt and absolutely no self-loathing. We’re only going to talk about how much I love you, and how you have way too many clothes on right now.”   
  
“What about how much I love _you_...?”   
  
It was free before Bucky could stop it, and he cringed inwardly. Steve stopped to stare at him again, but this time his eyes were brighter. Bucky recognized the artist coming to the forefront and cataloging all the details of Bucky that he would want to conjure up later so he could commit them to paper.   
  
“After careful consideration, I deem your suggested topic fully acceptable and fully welcomed.”   
  
“Jackass,” Bucky breathed, but then he sat up to pull Steve in for another kiss.   
  
“No stealing my pet names,” Steve complained against Bucky’s lips, but his voice was breathy and wanton.   
  
“No…? How ‘bout just your breath then?” Bucky ran his fingers over the increasing tightness of Steve’s pants, pushing hard to compensate for the thickness of the fabric. When Steve gasped into his mouth, Bucky thought they were done talking. After a few minutes of writhing against Bucky’s hand though, Steve pulled away and shook his head as though shaking off a daze.   
  
“How…” Steve swallowed loudly, and Bucky noticed that little tremors were twitching Steve’s hands and shoulders. “How do you wanna do this…? I’m not… I don’t know what I’m doing…”   
  
“You think I’ve fucked a guy before, Stevie?” Bucky didn’t mean to laugh, but he was just as nervous as Steve. For his part, Steve’s body blushed scarlet from his cheeks to his waistline. Even his biceps were ruddy.   
  
“I… I haven’t done this with _anyone_ , Bucky. You at least had girls before…”   
  
“You mean… No one?” Bucky’s stomach fluttered through all kinds of crazy patterns over that. “But I thought- What about Peggy Carter?”   
  
“Peggy!” Steve looked horrified. “No! She was way too classy to do anything more than kiss me in the time that I knew her.” He looked down at Bucky with shy eyes then, his skin flushing even more. “Not sure that I would have anyway, Buck. My heart was elsewhere, and I really think she knew that.”   
  
“Oh.” Bucky needed a moment to process that little tidbit. He’d always assumed there had been more between Steve and Peggy, but now he was kicking himself for jumping to conclusions. It was difficult not to when Peggy had been so blatant about her interest in Steve in the bar that night. That was back when he could still get drunk on a few whiskeys, and he’d gotten really lit that night, thinking that he’d finally lost Steve to someone else. Now, even through the haze of time, Bucky remembered just how many times Steve had looked down at Bucky’s lips as they talked.   
  
“What about those USO gals…? The dancing ones…?”   
  
“No, Buck. I was still getting used to being noticed… and I had other things on my mind.”   
  
“Twenty-six year old kid surrounded by beautiful girls-”   
  
“And none of them were you,” Steve cut him off with a bit of irritation bleeding through his patience. “And then I found you… lost you… took a long nap-”   
  
“But after you were found,” Bucky began. “Jesus, Steve, there had to be something. You had to be lonely-”   
  
“Joined the Avengers… fought aliens…” Steve continued as if Bucky hadn’t spoken, lifting his fingers to count upon. “Went on missions… liberated the _Lemurian Star_ … uncovered HYDRA hiding within SHIELD… got beat up again for the first time in ages by this guy with a metal arm-”   
  
“Steve, stop.” Bucky knew Steve was being facetious, and he’d explicitly told Steve not to tiptoe around him where his past was concerned, but this hurt in a way that discussing his programming and brainwashing no longer did. He’d very nearly killed Steve in the Battle of Washington, and whatever else he managed to finally forgive himself for, that wasn’t on the list.   
  
“So tell me,” Steve prompted again, seeming to know where Bucky’s mind had gone and wanting to pull him back. From the time Steve uttered his name on the bridge, he was still the only one who could successfully pull Bucky away from the chasm that his mind sometimes wanted to careen into. He was the only one who could clear the fog of flashbacks and hallucinations away. All just with a touch or a few murmured words.   
  
“Tell me how we do this. I promise to look up tutorials later.”   
  
“Like hell,” Bucky growled even though he knew Steve was joking. He pushed Steve to the side so he could climb off the bed. “We’ll figure it out. Just stay put.”   
  
“Yes, sir,” Steve answered quietly. When Bucky came back from tossing the contents of several bathroom drawers around, Steve was on his back on the bed… and very, very naked.   
  
Bucky nearly dropped the half-empty bottle of lube, and the towels he’d found.   
  
He crawled over the mattress, his mind divided between not crushing the lube bottle within his metal grip, and every porn video he’d watched since his libido returned. His right hand grazed along Steve’s thigh and over his abdomen.   
  
“Buck…? Clothes, pal. Way too many.”   
  
Bucky’s brain took a moment to comprehend that, and then he was back off the bed. As he shucked his undershirt and started in on his various waist and thigh holsters, Steve picked the bottle up and chuckled at the name.   
  
“Astroglide? Nice.”   
  
“It was that or the Lubriplate in my pocket… and that shit stinks,” Bucky mumbled as he ditched his boots. “How the hell did you get undressed so fast?”   
  
“Because I’m not a walking armory like you are,” Steve grinned, tossing the bottle back at Bucky once he’d freed himself of his pants.   
  
“That’s why your dumb, punk ass needs me at your six all the time,” Bucky muttered, climbing back onto the bed.   
  
“Prefer you at my three. You can still watch my six from there,” Steve smiled up at him, reaching up to tug lightly at his hair. Bucky was more than happy to oblige Steve, dipping his neck to kiss those smartass lips.   
  
“When I imagined this before… I always figured you’d have to do me. I was worried I’d hurt you otherwise…” Steve’s eyes darkened slightly, likely a knee-jerk reaction to Bucky’s concern for him. Bucky remembered all-too-well how sensitive Steve used to be about his physique back then but, surprisingly, Steve didn’t verbalize it.   
  
“Neither of us is gonna hurt the other now,” Steve reassured him, stroking his fingertips over Bucky’s arms, “at least nothing harmful… but I’d feel better if you took the lead this time.”   
  
“Still watching out for my delicate psyche?” Bucky gave Steve a rueful smirk, but the concern Steve was showing him didn’t go unappreciated.   
  
“You’re not delicate any more than you’re a powder keg,” Steve murmured. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”   
  
“There’s things that could be better though,” he answered glibly, but Steve shook his head as he reached up to trace the angles of Bucky’s face.   
  
“Show me one person you _can’t_ say that about,” Steve frowned, “and anyway I said no self-loathing… so shut up and fuck me.”   
  
Bucky’s skin heated up over Steve uttering a command that sounded particularly filthy coming from his mouth. “Serum just made the bossy part of you worse,” he cracked, warming some of the lubricant on his fingers. “Bottoms aren’t supposed to be this bossy are they, Stevie?”   
  
“It’s called a power bottom,” Steve corrected him, making Bucky’s stomach jolt appreciatively. He slipped the tip of one finger inside, and whatever else Steve might have been ready to say died in a glorious intake of breath. Bucky leaned up to Steve’s ear as he eased his finger deeper.   
  
“What I want to hear from you is not label correctness,” he growled with a gentle nip to Steve’s neck, “only how you’re feeling.”   
  
Steve didn’t answer him but, more importantly, he didn’t contradict him or tell him to stop. Back when he’d just started messing around with girls, Bucky remembered being a quick study. He was observant and paid enough attention to the reactions he got that he could always repeat what worked. So when he began slowly fucking Steve with his finger, and Steve suddenly arched upward, Bucky knew what to do once Steve settled.   
  
“Ya like that?” he questioned softly, placing his free hand to Steve’s hip to hold him still. “How about this…?” He began to take Steve into his mouth, but something in his gut rebelled against it. Instead, he licked along the underside of Steve’s cock while he pushed his finger in the same way. Steve cried out and arched again, a small drop of pearly fluid landing on his belly. Bucky grinned up at Steve through his lashes, murmuring praise and encouragement as Steve’s chest heaved. That wasn’t a real orgasm, but it warned Bucky what spot to steer clear of if they wanted to take this all the way.   
  
Bucky introduced a second finger, and Steve groped blindly with his hand, his eyes squeezed tight. Bucky lifted his metal fingers to Steve’s hand, and Steve gripped them tightly. The pressure lit up Bucky’s sensors in a way that felt comforting to him for a change.   
  
“Okay, Stevie…?”   
  
“Yeah,” Steve panted. “More, Buck…”   
  
“Okay… easy…” he soothed, still working the two fingers inside Steve’s body. He spread his fingers a little, and barely grazed that spot again. Steve’s whole body shuddered and a smaller pearl leaked from his cock. Bucky didn’t dare touch Steve’s erection or his own. He kept his free hand within Steve’s grasp, and focused upon the give of Steve’s body until Steve whined plaintively.   
  
“Shhh, I got you,” he murmured, slowly pushing a third finger in. Steve’s hips tried to lift, but Bucky lowered his head until his temple pressed against the underside of Steve’s cock. Steve would do everything he could not to rut against Bucky in this position, and Bucky took full advantage of that gentlemanly propriety. He pumped his fingers until he felt little resistance and a lot of writhing beneath him.   
  
“Still okay?”   
  
Steve bobbed his head rapidly, so Bucky pulled his fingers free. He wiped them off on the towel as Steve reached out for him. Climbing up Steve’s body, Bucky positioned himself then looked down at Steve. Blue eyes locked as Bucky slowly buried himself, and then Steve was pulling him down into a desperate kiss. Bucky was grateful for it because the divine heat of Steve’s body surrounding him had him teetering right at the edge. Steve’s hand gliding down his back to rest possessively upon his ass nudged him closer to release, even as it also managed to ground him. He loved the feeling of belonging to Steve, craved it. It caused more warmth to bloom through his chest and beneath his skin. At that moment, the whole world could go straight to hell for all Bucky cared. This was everything to him. If he could have this and keep it, everything was just details to deal with until they could get back to this.

His movements were almost miniscule at first, just a gentle rocking of his body against Steve’s. It was more motion than friction, his old fears of hurting Steve creeping into his subconscious, but he also wanted it to last as long as possible. This felt too sweet, too tantalizing to rush through. He kept on like that until Steve urged him on. Even then, he only adjusted enough to quell Steve’s impatience, until Steve coaxed him yet again.   
  
They kept on like that, gradually stair-stepping their need until they were both slick with sweat, and Bucky was driving hard into Steve. Despite the all-consuming sensations they were both feeling, neither allowed themselves to be loud. It was anyone’s guess how sensitive the zombies’ hearing was, or how far their voices might carry. It made all the edges feel sharper, having to use such restraint, but Bucky eventually wanted to hear just how loud he could make Steve scream his name. He wanted to know every way to take Steve Rogers apart, and then how best to pull him back together afterward.   
  
Heat began to spread through Bucky’s gut, and crawl along his spine, so he knew he was close. He hadn’t touched Steve’s cock at all, and Steve was too busy digging his fingers into Bucky’s shoulder and ass to do it either. He remembered the spot from earlier and lifted Steve’s hips to angle himself to try to hit it again. When he managed it, all the air left Steve’s lungs in a shocked grunt. Steve’s head fell back, and his hand dropped down to join the other in clutching Bucky’s ass. His fingertips slid along Bucky’s crease, and when he rubbed against Bucky’s hole and that was it. Bucky aimed his last sharp thrusts against Steve’s prostate and came hard. Wanting Steve to feel the same blinding pleasure he had, Bucky slipped free and rolled his body just enough to gain better access before they lost momentum. Still panting through the echoes of his own release, Bucky pushed two fingers back inside as he took hold of Steve’s erection. He found the spot again and and smiled weakly as Steve’s eyes rolled back into his head. Bucky barely noticed the cum slipping through his fingers as Steve spurted violently across his own chest. Steve was just too beautiful like this for Bucky to care about anything else.   
  
The moment Steve regained enough of his senses to reach out, Bucky crawled back up so he could tangle his body alongside Steve’s. It was unusual these days, but Bucky actually lost his sense of time as they lay there, still and silent. It wasn’t until Steve murmured softly to him that Bucky looked at his watch. Forty minutes had passed in what felt more like ten as Steve’s fingers scratched lightly over his scalp.   
  
“Guess we should get back to it… Check the fridge and start back for the airport.”   
  
“No.”   
  
Steve shifted in an attempt to see Bucky’s face, but Bucky didn’t move a single muscle.   
  
“Buck?”   
  
“Don’t wanna leave yet,” Bucky replied softly, his words slurring from the way his cheek was pressed to Steve’s chest.   
  
“I don’t want to either, but-”   
  
“You told me that it was okay to be a little selfish sometimes.” Bucky closed his eyes as he slipped his arm further around Steve’s waist. “I’m doing that now. We’ve got a few hours before we’ve got green light status, and I want to take advantage of that. Once we get to the airport, who knows how long it’ll be before we have time to ourselves again. We’ve waited so long for this. We’re staying in this bed a while longer. If that means you gotta have Fury send out another check… fuck it. Let him deal with it. He fucking owes us at least that.”   
  
“So I’m being overruled, Sergeant?”   
  
“Yes, you fucking well are,” Bucky grunted, still not moving, but there wasn’t much behind his tone except a deep, weary ache that he hadn’t quelled yet. There was silence as Steve considered his words, but then Bucky’s chin was being tipped upward gently. Steve looked down at him with such a tender smile that it made his chest ache.   
  
“Okay,” Steve whispered. “We’ll wait it out a little longer here.”   
  
Bucky already felt renewed interest pooling below his waist again as he closed his eyes, but instead of starting another round, he slipped his leg over Steve’s and moved their bodies even closer. Steve hummed low in his throat and placed light kisses to Bucky’s crown while Bucky lazily pressed his emerging erection into the side of Steve’s ass. The head of his cock nestled perfectly into the dimple there, and lovely visuals flickered behind Bucky’s eyelids because of it.   
  
“Thank you,” he muttered against Steve’s skin.   
  
“For what, Buck?” Steve was still petting and kissing his head, his voice sluggish with the same exhaustion Bucky felt.   
  
“Not arguing with me.”   
  
“I can tell when it’s not going to make any difference,” Steve answered with a smile bleeding through his voice, “and it’s not like I want to leave either. As long as we get back to the airport by wheels up, I can set aside the need to put down as many of them as possible.”   
  
“Just surprised,” Bucky whispered after thinking over Steve’s response. “Expected a lecture about duty and responsibility and shit that I’m finding harder and harder to care about anymore.”   
  
“No lectures. As much as I want to do everything I can to stop this virus, there’s always been one thing that could trump my sense of duty. One thing that will always take priority above everything else when it comes down to it.”   
  
Expecting a smartass comment to follow up, Bucky still took the bait. “Yeah…? What’s that, Captain America?”   
  
“You.”   
  
Bucky’s eyes opened, and his hand gripped Steve’s waist a little tighter. Steve didn’t try to get him to look back up at him as he continued his answer, and Bucky was a little grateful for that.   
  
“Captain America would push on and argue the point with you, Bucky… but Steve Rogers will always overrule him when it comes to you. Steve Rogers went after the 107th. Steve Rogers refused to kill you on the helicarrier. Steve Rogers refused to turn you over to SHIELD when you finally agreed to stay with me.” He chuckled softly and Bucky felt the vibration roll through his own ribcage. “Steve Rogers chooses to stay in bed with his…”   
  
Bucky’s breath stuttered then froze inside his chest. “His what?”   
  
“Boyfriend…?” Steve questioned uncertainly. “Is that the label we want to use?”   
  
“If ‘boyfriend’ makes it clear that I will rip anyone’s face off that tries to hit on you, then I’m fine with it,” Bucky stated flatly. “As un-PC as it sounds… you’re mine… and I’m yours. Bottom line.”   
  
“Maybe just growl at ‘em,” Steve grinned. “Believe me, it’s just as effective.”   
  
“Hmm,” Bucky hummed back, not quite convinced, but willing to make at least a temporary compromise on the point. His mind wandered again until a sharp-edged thought occurred to him.   
  
“What about Captain America though?”   
  
“What about him?” Steve grunted, sounding oddly nonplussed about his alter ego.   
  
“Are we… Do we need to keep this hidden because of you being Captain America?” Bucky’s stomach clenched painfully at the idea of it. It would feel like being back in their youth again, scared of shadows and the hellfire they could bring down upon them.   
  
Steve sighed and shifted beneath Bucky so that he could curl onto his side and look directly into Bucky’s eyes. He rested his hand over the back of Bucky’s and squeezed.   
  
“You know I’d run myself into the ground defending this country, Bucky, but I’m tired… So much happened and I’ve barely stopped to make sense of much of it. I told Fury when you came back that you weren’t to be pressured into any assignments. If he did, I was prepared to walk away from SHIELD without a moment’s hesitation.”   
  
Bucky felt a strange elation over that, even though it also made him feel guilty. Steve loved helping people and he was a natural leader. Who was Bucky to endanger that? Steve was worth ten of him, even more. He didn’t feel he had a right to fracture that part of Steve.   
  
“I couldn’t let you do that,” he muttered, averting his eyes.   
  
“It wouldn’t be your choice,” Steve informed him bluntly. “I know you’re even more tired of this than I am. It’s why we were supposed to get time away after this was taken care of… because I’ve already been making noise to Sam and Fury about wanting to take a break from this… be a normal guy for a little while. If you told me you’d had enough right here and now, Bucky, that would be all I’d need to hear. Once we’ve done what we can about this virus, we could walk away. Go do whatever we decide to do.”   
  
Bucky huffed out a breath of pure annoyance and rolled his eyes. “Steve, you can’t just retire Captain America. You’d never forgive yourself if something serious happened in your absence. Don’t talk stupid. Not to me.”   
  
“I’m not saying I could necessarily retire permanently,” Steve admitted, “but I don’t think I can do this indefinitely. Tony walked away for a little while and came back better for it. I think I need that. I’m pretty sure you do too.”   
  
“A break sounded good two hours ago,” Bucky mused as he reached out to trail his thumb along Steve’s temple. He felt the shame of his next words acutely, but honesty was so important to Steve, and the little punk had always been able to see right through him when it came to things like this. It’s a wonder Steve hadn’t had him sent home after rescuing the 107th.   
  
“A break now sounds even better. Not feelin’ all that patriotic right now. Want time with you.”   
  
“Then that’s what we’ll do after we get this virus under control,” Steve nodded, but Bucky was quick to stop him there.   
  
“Uh uh. It’s a zombie outbreak, Steve. This ain’t gonna be over anytime that soon. Don’t make any promises right now because we don’t know that we can keep ‘em.”   
  
“I’m just talking about getting back some semblance of order,” Steve sighed, rubbing as his eyes. “We don’t have to wait until every last one is gone, or until Bruce gets this figured out.”   
  
“Can’t believe this is you talking, Stevie,” Bucky murmured. “Waiting for the righteous, stubborn kid to come back outta ya.”   
  
“Oh he’s in here still,” Steve smiled wearily as he tapped his chest, “but even he got too worn down to fight sometimes… Nothing good is going to come out of two burned out super soldiers, Buck… I know what it feels like to lose you. I don’t want to go through that again. I can’t.”   
  
“I hear Fiji is nice.”   
  
Steve giggled softly, which did wonders for reversing the wilting of Bucky’s erection. Steve tapped his index fingers against Bucky’s left arm and quirked his brow in question.   
  
“Would this be okay in that kind of heat and humidity?”   
  
Bucky shrugged as his mind scanned through the million and one Travel Network and NatiGeo shows he watched while on the mend at Steve’s place. “New Zealand has a cool cave with worms that glow.”   
  
“I’ll put it on the list,” Steve grinned. “We can start a bucket list.”   
  
Bucky’s face skewed almost comically at that. “Bucket list? What’s that?”   
  
“It’s a list of things you want to do before you die,” Steve explained. Bucky stared back at him blankly until utter mischief started to crawl along the underside of his skin. He’d suddenly had enough of talking.   
  
“Things ya wanna do huh…?” He pulled Steve as he rolled onto his back. Steve laughed as he braced his weight onto his elbows on either side of Bucky’s ribs. “I think what you need instead is a Bucky list… Things you really wanna do to Bucky before you leave this room…”   
  
“That’d be an obscenely long list, Buck,” Steve grinned down at him, his eyes sparkling even though he’d groaned at Bucky’s joke. “Not sure there’s time for all of it.”   
  
“You’ve been through a war, Rogers. _Triage_.” Bucky huffed and pulled Steve’s groin against his own. They both hissed loudly as their cocks aligned.   
  
“Want you in my mouth,” Steve murmured. “First time I saw one of the sailors doing that, I couldn’t get it out of my head for days. I wanted to pin you to one of the alley walls like they were doing, and suck you dry.”   
  
Bucky’s stomach did another vicious kick at the thought of anyone’s dick being in anyone’s mouth, but he quickly pushed it away. “Later,” he grunted. “Put that one further down the list… This feels great.”   
  
Steve paused his slow rutting to stare intently at Bucky. “You okay?” he asked seriously, worry darkening his eyes. Bucky stared back for only a few seconds before steeling his resolve.   
  
“ _Later_ ,” he repeated. Truth was, he wasn’t sure what was buried inside his mind that was making him sick at the thought of it, but he definitely didn’t want to scratch at that scab right then. Steve’s eyes roamed his face before he nodded, effectively dropping the subject.   
  
He wrapped his hand around them both, but didn’t stroke until Bucky found the lube and dribbled some onto their cocks. Bucky really wanted to feel Steve inside of him, but Steve seemed reluctant to do that just yet. It was okay though; they had time, and right now Steve’s hand was warm and plenty big enough to give them a tight channel to thrust into. It didn’t take long before Steve’s fingers were coated with their co-mingled release. Thank every fucking god there was that they had short refractory periods, because their stamina was currently worse than a clumsy teenager. Bucky would’ve been annoyed if coming hot and hard against Steve hadn’t felt so damn good.   
  
Steve wiped them both off and pulled Bucky back against his chest. He looked down at his watch and set the alarm on it.   
  
“Two hours sound fair? It’ll leave us a little time to cook something quick if the fridge is stocked.”   
  
Bucky nodded silently. He was already half gone, speeding toward a nice, temporary oblivion, wrapped in the warmth of Steve’s arms.


	10. "Why the hell did you do that?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Objective 1: Rendevous with Sam Wilson  
> Objective 2: Airport  
> Objective 3: Deliver samples and debrief at Stark Industries  
> Objective 4: Devise plan to re-establish civil order  
> Objective 5: Tell the world to fuck off for a while

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I've added a spoiler tag at the end, but I strongly advise against looking because it's only a technicality.
> 
> Thank you so much to those of you supporting this story! It means so much to me that you're all taking this ride with me, and I hope Part IV will continue to keep you invested in Bucky and Steve's journey. 
> 
> Also, thanks to [Shaish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaish/pseuds/Shaish), and [SkyIsGray](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyIsGray/pseuds/SkyIsGray) for talking through my ideas for this chapter. It encouraged me to really commit to the direction I wanted to take this story.

Waking up with Bucky in his bed wasn’t a novelty to Steve. There had been too many frigid nights before and during the war to count, and Steve hadn’t minded a single one of them. He couldn’t find it within himself to wish for warmer temperatures when a chill in the air meant that Bucky would end up huddled close to him to share body heat. After DC, and after Bucky had protected him from the Cloverfield parasites, Bucky finally agreed to stay with Steve. It had only taken two weeks for a vicious nightmare to prompt Bucky to curl up on the floor near Steve’s bed. The next night, Steve had held the covers up and Bucky had silently crawled beneath them. If Steve woke up with Bucky pressed against his back, it was never discussed. The only words uttered in the darkness were Steve’s when he would gently coax Bucky awake before his whimpers became screams.

Waking up with Bucky completely naked in his bed had actually happened before as well. At nineteen, Bucky had contracted a horrific case of influenza. In the dead of a winter night, Bucky’s temperature had spiked, leaving him delirious and agitated. He had pulled his pajamas from his body in a moment of desperate confusion, and climbed into bed with Steve. Bucky promptly curled in on himself and began convulsing, so Steve’s shock had been short-lived. He’d ended up having to bundle himself up and crack one of their apartment windows in an effort to get Bucky’s fever back down to a safe level. Huddling next to Bucky and holding his hands while he cried and writhed through the throes of his fever had been one of the most terrifying moments of Steve’s life. He couldn’t allow himself to sleep, afraid that he’d wake up to find Bucky half frozen or worse. Instead he’d stayed there with his beloved friend, murmuring anything he could think of to anchor Bucky and ease his suffering.

Waking up to Bucky healthy, naked, and intimately wrapped around him…? Yeah, that was definitely new. Realizing the soft moans against his neck, and the subtle undulations of Bucky’s groin against his hip was a heated dream and not a nightmare…? Also new. Steve wasn’t about to complain. He shifted his hip a little, and was rewarded with Bucky’s half-mast erection taking immediate interest in the firm, warm surface it had been provided. Steve bit back a moan as his name escaped Bucky’s lips in his sleep, breathy and needy as he rutted against Steve.   
  
It was fifteen minutes prior to Steve’s alarm sounding when Bucky spilled against his skin, still sweet and pliant in his groggy state. A few minutes later, Steve followed with Bucky pumping him through his orgasm while his own cock rubbed its pearly fluid possessively into Steve’s skin. They spent the last eight minutes silently holding onto one another and locking away every sensory memory they’d gained: The warmth of full-body contact, the taste of sweat, the scent of arousal, the sounds of wanton pleasure, the grounding firmness of taut muscles beneath trembling hands, and the heady bliss of reverent kisses against overheated skin.

They took turns rinsing off in the shower, acutely aware of how foolhardy it would be to do so in tandem. They needed to remain alert to outside sounds, and Steve knew if he joined Bucky in the shower, they’d be geriatric prunes before he’d ever want to leave.

They weren’t speaking much now. They didn’t need to. The dischord they’d felt earlier disappeared once they’d opened up to one another. The man in the shower upstairs was precious and desperately loved, and now that Steve knew those feelings were fully mutual, a deep sense of peace seemed to settle inside him. He still had concerns and fears, but they were softened by Steve no longer feeling the overwhelming ache he’d carried since Bucky fell from that god-forsaken train. One could argue that they were now each other’s weakness, but Steve would argue to that being nothing new. Bucky had always been his weakness, and Steve didn’t see that changing, but now that they were connected in every way, he felt stronger for it. Even more ferocious and determined now, if that was possible, and at the same time infinitely lighter.   
  
“I’m really likin’ the view in this place.”   
  
Steve blinked and looked over his shoulder from where he was looking through the contents of the refrigerator. Bucky leaned against the kitchen counter, re-dressed with damp hair, crossed arms, and a lecherous smirk upon his lips. It took Steve a moment to realize how looking through the bottom drawers in the fridge had his ass on full display. His skin temperature elevated over the fact that Bucky looked like he wanted to take a solid bite out of one of Steve’s cheeks… and not the ones on his face.    
  
“Did you get turned in the shower, because you look like you wanna eat me alive,” Steve joked with a roll of his eyes and went back to pulling items from the fridge. He’d gladly take that look from Bucky, because it was an echo of who he was before the war, except without a genteel filter.   
  
“The idea has some merit,” Bucky mused, not moving from his spot. Steve glanced back again to find that Bucky was still watching him.   
  
“Stop ogling my ass and grab a skillet, Buck. There’s enough stuff in here to make omelettes with.”

He nearly hit his head on the open freezer door when Bucky groped his ass in passing. New… but he could definitely get used to it.   
  


_________________________

  
  
It should have been easier to find a car to use, but there were only a handful to be found in the last five miles. None of them looked like they’d go ten feet, much less the distance to the airport. People had obviously fled this area early on, which meant less hissers loping about. The one thing they had going for them was a modicum of stealth to trade off for speed. They’d encountered a few straggly groups, but the lack of engine noise had allowed them to silently backtrack without being detected. Even with their increasing agility, the two soldiers were still far faster than any of the zombies. By the time the groups caught their scent on the air, Bucky and Steve were long gone from the vicinity. 

Steve just wanted to connect with Sam, get to the airport and get out. It didn’t matter that they were having a similar problem in New York. They would have Tony and Bruce’s input then, and they wouldn’t feel so cut off some form of sanity.   
  
He almost laughed that Tony Stark could actually represent sanity to him now. It really was an apocalypse if that was the state of things, because he would never have accused Tony of being a bastion of sanity. At least Tony and Bucky managed to speak a similar sort of language when it came to armaments.

_ Well… kinda _ , Steve thought dryly as he remembered the Bank Tower. Still, there was a sense of comfort in returning to New York and knowing that they had the power to figure it out together with the others. The safety of Stark Tower would certainly be a nice reprieve for a short time while they discussed the situation. Fresh, zombie-tailored gear would be another relief. He was certain that Tony had already made adjustments to their uniforms. The more the better, as far as Steve was concerned.   
  
Beside him, Bucky stopped and put out his hand to halt Steve as well. He pointed two fingers forward, and Steve focused on a drainage ditch three blocks ahead. It looked like four zombies had a fresh kill in the curve of the ditch. Sad, but not surprising. What was surprising were the two additional zombies standing still above them on the side of the road. They weren’t eating. Why wouldn’t they being in a mad frenzy to eat like every other zombie they’d seen so far?   
  
Steve looked over at Bucky questioningly. Bucky’s brows were furrowed as he slowly started to move to cover rather than run. His motions were small, miniscule. His eyes never left the scene down the road. Steve began to do the same, never more glad to have his matte-textured shield with him and his stealth uniform on. He didn’t know if these things could see color, but he didn’t foresee donning his red, white, and blue getups anytime soon. There was a time for being a visible symbol, but this was definitely not one of them.   
  
They crouched behind a hedge and watched with growing trepidation as the two zombies seemed to stand sentinel over the carnage below them. They weren’t visibly scanning the area that Steve could tell, but they weren’t mindlessly diving in either. Steve’s stomach clenched with worry.   
  
They thought the meal had drawn to an end because the four in the ditch climbed out. Both men’s jaws dropped though as the two seeming guards slid down the ditch to claim their share.   
  
“Steve,” Bucky whispered, “I think they’re learning to hunt like a pack… like lions.”   
  
“Ella mentioned a hive mind,” Steve reminded Bucky as he started to feel sick to his stomach. What they’d had going for them up to now was a lack of cognitive thinking and agility on the zombies’ side. If that was giving way to something more refined, the world might very well go straight to Hell even faster than anticipated.

“We gotta get outta here,” Steve whispered urgently. Beside him, Bucky nodded silently and crept from the bushes.    
  
They kept to the shadows of the trees as they went for the next side street, but then drew up short as a group of about forty came around the corner. Their heads all turned simultaneously toward the two soldiers, and Steve’s blood felt like it had turned to ice.   
  
“Car…?” he asked quietly as they began to back up, but Bucky shook his head.   
  
“Too dangerous,” he muttered. “Can’t get cornered by ‘em. Not these guys. High ground, if we can find any.”   
  
Steve nodded again, and they ran.   
  
They split up, each looking for something to climb. Steve aimed for a dumpster that had a metal lid. Bucky saw a bus stop with a low overhang, but it was high enough that the zombies couldn’t follow. Steve heard Bucky picking them off as he ran.

He was in the process of flipping the lid on the dumpster when one tackled him from behind. Steve grabbed the creature’s hair to keep its mouth away from his neck as he climbed onto the dumpster. The metal lid was two sections, so only half the dumpster was covered. As he tried to stand upright, his footing was thrown off center by the flailing zombie and he slipped. They fell into the load of trash, and Steve grabbed the parasite with both hands as they struggled to gain purchase among the sharp edges and uneven planes. Steve was finally able to turn enough that he gained a better grip on the zombie, which was much stronger than those before it. He slammed its head against the side of the dumpster until it fell motionless from his grasp. Steve took a moment to dig through the trash and found a long piece of pipe. He climbed back onto the half lid, then grabbed the other side to close it, giving himself more room to maneuver.    
  
When Steve looked around the perimeter of the dumpster, he realized several more zombies had joined the soiree, including the six from the ditch. They really were moving faster now, but luckily the dumpster was still beyond their range of motion. He glanced up to see Bucky deftly handling the twenty-eight that had followed him to the bus stop, so he focused his attention upon the ones surrounding him. The pipe was perfect for swinging against the tops of their heads, and it took him no time to drop the twenty-six grabbing at his ankles.   
  
  
_________________________   
  
  


When Bucky drew his Sig and shot the last two zombies reaching for him, Steve had already dispatched the last zombie on his side. The boyish grin Bucky received likely mirrored his own. The man facing him was his now. Apparently, Steve always had been his, but  now it was complete, and official, and irrevocable… and  awesome. Better still, the world had changed enough that Bucky didn’t need to hide anything he felt for Steve; he didn’t have to mask his overwhelming devotion, need, or sheer lust from his expression.    
  
High from the adrenaline of beating the odds yet again, there was no lack of desire behind Bucky’s eyes as he watched Steve drop the metal pipe to the top of the dumpster.  Bucky had used the last of his rifle ammo, so he left the weapon. He really liked the rifle, but Stark would have a replacement for him at the Tower, and it was foolish to carry it when all it would do is serve as a possible handhold for an ambitious zombie. Better to leave it behind. There was no civilian shells that would fit it anyway.    
  
Bucky hopped down from the bus stop overhang and was jogging toward his hot-as-fuck boyfriend when Steve subtly swayed and blinked rapidly. Bucky frowned as Steve shook his head as though to clear his vision.    
  
“What?” Bucky slowed as he waited for an answer, but Steve didn’t seem to have one for him. He shook his head again and squinted at Bucky.   
  
“I dunno… I’m not sure.” He dropped from the top of the dumpster he’d used for high ground, but stumbled when his feet hit the pavement. 

Steve Rogers didn’t normally get dizzy anymore.   
  
Bucky started to move again, but this time at a dead run. He was nearly to Steve when the vibranium shield clattered to the ground, Steve’s fingers unable to clutch it as they hung limply at his side. He looked confused as he raised his unfocused eyes to Bucky, who reached him just in time to keep him from collapsing to the bloody pavement.   
  
“Steve! Stevie…? Look at me!”   
  
“Might have a problem, Buck…” Steve’s voice was suddenly gravelly and wrong to Bucky’s ears.    
  
“Yeah, you and your damn metabolism from hell,” Bucky scowled, rubbing Steve’s upper arm as if that would help. “I shoulda known those omelettes weren’t gonna be enough. Sorry, pal. I’m just used to you being the one getting me to eat more.”   
  
He was really a lot better about that now. Bucky’s body actually had a circadian rhythm again, and hunger made itself known on a far more regular basis these days, thanks to Steve with a lot of input from Bruce Banner.  He even ate at times that he wasn’t necessarily hungry. If Steve was eating, Bucky would occasionally help himself to a bite if it smelled good. Sometimes he did it just to be playful. Other times, it was simply the fact that he alone could get away with raiding Steve’s plate, and that held a chaste feeling of intimacy that Bucky craved from Steve. It never occurred to him that Steve let him do it because he craved the same closeness.    
  
Bucky found himself wishing they’d known sooner, but pushed the thought away before the guilt over Ella surged back. He quickly scanned the area around them. There was nothing in sight, but Bucky needed to get them out of the open and find something else for Steve to eat.   
  
It was then that the unique zombie smell grew stronger around them.    
  
Bucky looked frantically about, trying to detect any movement, but saw nothing. He hooked Steve's shield back onto his harness, then hefted Steve’s arm over his shoulder. He half carried, half dragged him toward the nearest house on the street that looked moderately secure.    


“Buck-”   
  
“Shh!” Bucky quieted Steve as they neared the door. The smell was slowly gaining potency, and Bucky hoped like hell it wasn’t coming from inside as he picked the lock and eased open the door.   
  
He’d chosen well; the space was a sort of artist’s loft comprised of a single room with stairs leading up to a half-floor. It was blessedly empty, and  the floorplan made it easily defendable. If any of the creatures made it past the locked the door, they’d be easy to pick off as they attempted the narrow staircase.  Bucky threw the deadbolt then helped Steve up the stairs.    
  
“That fucking smell is annoying,” Bucky muttered as he lowered Steve to a futon mattress sprawled flat on the hardwood floor. Steve swallowed hard and looked up at him with glassy eyes.   
  
“I think it’s me, Buck.”   
  
“What?” Bucky scoffed at the remark, but a feverish feeling began to crawl under his skin and settled into a ball of dread in his gut as he shrugged off Ella’s backpack. “Nah, they’re everywhere out there. That smell isn’t gonna go away anytime soon.”   
  
“Bucky…”   
  
Bucky waved impatiently at him. “You stay there. I’m gonna check that little fridge down there and see what’s in it. Once you eat something, you’ll feel better.”   
  
“Bucky, it got me.”   
  
“No, you’re just confused. Low blood sugar or-”   


 

“I wasn’t sure it made contact, but there was so much jabbing at me in the dumpster when we fell… I’m-”   
  
“Knock it off, Steve," Bucky growled back at his lover. "You’d be really sick already.”   
  
“I am, Buck.”   
  
“ _ Stop it! Shut up! _ ”    
  
Bucky clenched his fists once the gritted snarl left his mouth. This was wrong. Steve was wrong. He had to be.

He strode back to Steve and crouched down beside him. Bucky’s hand trembled above Steve’s shoulder before he finally reached out and gently rolled Steve onto his side so he could examine the only place it could have happened. The gash in Steve’s suit was crusted with fresh blood. The gash in his flesh from the explosions at Kaiser had mostly closed up before they left the bungalow, but now it was oozing thick, milky fluid. When Bucky looked closer, his heart felt as though someone had crushed it within his chest.    
  
A faint set of bite marks showed at the edge of the laceration. They’d barely broken the skin; like when a dog accidently nips during over-excited play. Steve’s body had managed to mostly heal the bite before the virus started to spread through his system.    
  
Bucky recoiled. He lost his balance and fell forward onto his knees, still holding firmly onto Steve’s shoulder. It couldn’t be happening this way. This was not how Steve Rogers was supposed to go out. They were supposed to live long, cantankerous lives full of mischievous adventures. They were supposed to bicker and swear and love and protect for years to come.    
  
They were supposed to clear the fucking Getty.   
  
“Don’t, Steve,” Bucky whispered, letting Steve settle onto his back again. “Don’t do this.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” Steve apologized, regret lining his handsome face.

“ _ Fight _ ,” Bucky hissed at him, grabbing his chin and looking harshly into his eyes. “You fight this, Steve! You don’t get to leave me in this fucking shithole city! Not now! We just fucking found one another! We’re going to fucking New Zealand to watch fucking worms glow in a cave, dammit!”   
  
“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve repeated, and it made Bucky even angrier. “Wanted to see that too.”   
  
“No, don’t be sorry! Be pissed off! You were always pissed off as a kid! Stupid, pissed off, punk with a chip on your goddamned shoulder… Where the fuck is he at? He’d fight to his last fucking breath! He’d do everything to go to Fiji with me! Think of all the things to draw there!”   


“Bucky, I-”   
  
Unable to hear Steve’s broken voice, Bucky pointed an accusing finger at him. “Damn you,” he choked. “You promised me. You promised that we’d make time to go fuck off by ourselves somewhere. You don’t break your promises to me, Steve. You have to fight. Fight for your own damn self the way you’ve fought for me this past year.”   
  
Steve looked absolutely crushed as he gazed up at Bucky.   
  
“I’m trying. I swear I am, Bucky.”    
  
Staring down at Steve, Bucky’s mind raced. Panic seized his mind and heart as he released Steve’s chin and rubbed at his own face. He tried to imagine going back to a world without Steve, a world where he was alone again. His mind replayed HYDRA showing him the newspaper declaring Steve dead, and how all the hope and fight had drained from him instantly.    


_ No _ .   
  
Gripping the straps of  Steve’s shield harness, Bucky yanked him close and sealed their mouths together in a desperate kiss. Steve pushed weakly at his chest, but it didn’t end until Bucky pulled back to glare furiously at him.   
  
“ _ Try harder _ ,” came the low growl from his throat.   
  
“Bucky,” Steve gasped, as tears slipped from his bloodshot eyes, “why did you do that? Why the hell did you do that?”   
  
“You’re not leaving me here alone, Steve,” Bucky stated sharply, though his anger was now simmering down into sullen resignation.    
  
“No! They’re going to need you! You have to go back with the samples and help get this under control-”   


Bucky cut Steve’s words off by resting his palm to Steve’s jaw. “You can be disappointed in me all you want, but I can’t do this. I can’t stay here without you. It’s hard enough some days when you’re right beside me. I just can’t Steve. Please don’t hold that against me.”   
  
Clear drops hit Steve’s cheek and Bucky realized he was crying as well. He didn’t bother wiping at his eyes, but he did blink several times to clear his vision. His lips and tongue were stinging, the mild burn working its way to his throat. Steve’s uncoordinated hand tried for Bucky’s face and missed. Bucky reached for it and held it to his cheek as he stared intently down at Steve.   
  
“Not judging you, Buck… I’m sorry,” Steve whispered again, but this time Bucky just nodded.   
  
“I know. Me too.” He swallowed the growing tightness from his throat and ran his free hand over the messy spikes of Steve’s hair. The strands were dulling and beginning to fall limp against Steve’s forehead, so Bucky kept pushing them up to their intended spot.   
  
“You… I don’t wanna ask but… you’ll have to help me.” Bucky didn’t understand for a moment until Steve’s eyes shifted downward toward his hip. “Just position it, Buck. I’ll pull the trigger myself.”   
  
Flinching from Steve’s words, Bucky shook his head adamantly. “This is not the end of the line, Steve. It’s not. We’re not there yet, so shut it.”   
  
“I don’t want to be one of those things. I don’t want you to see that.” Steve’s voice took on a harder edge as though he was mustering his strength to will Bucky into listening to him.

“You heard Ella; there’s a chance it might not happen because of the serum.”   
  
“I’m sick, Bucky. I’m getting worse. It’s not in the cards this time… I’m sorry.” Steve was speaking to Bucky as he would a child, and Bucky didn’t appreciate it.   
  
“Stop apologizing. Yeah, you’re sick but you still might not turn.” Even as he said it, Bucky could feel the beginning pangs of the virus himself. A strange tightness in his chest and cold patches breaking out over his skin were the first indicators. There was also a soured taste in his mouth as he shifted on the floor to pull Steve’s torso into his lap. His stomach jolted at the movement, but stilled along with the rest of his body when he settled into place.   
  
“Might just be like the worst flu you’ve ever had and then it’ll go away like nuthin’.”   
  
“You don’t believe that anymore than I do,” Steve accused softly, reaching for Bucky’s hand.    
  
“I don’t  _ not  _ believe it,” Bucky retorted, allowing his hand to be guided to rest against Steve’s heart. Even though they hadn’t been sexually intimate until today, Bucky still knew the speed of Steve’s heartbeat. Faster than it was pre-serum, the sound had soothed him many times after a nightmare or brutal flashback while Steve protectively held onto him.   
  
Now it was slowing down.   


“Feel sick,” Steve gasped urgently, pulling Bucky instantly from his thoughts. He grabbed the nearest suitable object and rolled Steve so he could relieve the violent nausea. Once Steve was done, Bucky kicked the strange, modern-art flower pot away from them and cradled Steve's head in his hand. He grabbed Steve’s hand and again rested it, along with his own, to Steve’s chest so he could continue to feel the now-sluggish heartbeat beneath his palm.    
  
“Gun…”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Bucky-”   
  
“Shut up, punk. It’s not gonna go like that. Just keep fighting.” Bucky felt his own heart palpitating  as the virus struggled for control of his body. Atop his thighs, the muscles in Steve’s back were beginning to spasm and tremor erratically.  A thin trickle of pink slid from Steve’s eyes and mouth. Bucky wiped them away with stoic silence while inside he wanted to scream and rage against the injustice of gaining so much with Steve today, only to lose it this quickly. His mind kept searching for any bit of hope he could latch onto.   
  
“Grenade… like-”   
  
“Goddammit, Steve no!” He was beginning to feel weak, so he leaned his back against the wall and pulled Steve backward against his chest. “There aren’t anymore anyway.”   
  
Steve’s head rolled back against his shoulder and he tilted his face into the side of Bucky’s neck. “Wanted more time with you,” he murmured.   
  
“Stop talking like that. We’ll have time. We just gotta ride this out. HYDRA’s not gonna unleash something that would wipe out a program they worked on for over seventy years.”   
  
“You’re not theirs anymore. Why would they care?”   
  
Bucky huffed out a truncated, humorless laugh at Steve’s question. “Oh they care. They’ll probably never stop trying to get me back under their control. They put too much time into me. I was too successful.” His voice went hoarse before he spoke the last, and Steve squeezed his hand weakly.   
  
“Maybe they realize now that they never really had you, Bucky... Once something personal came into play… it all crumbled.” Steve’s voice faltered as his breathing became more shallow. Bucky was having his own difficulty breathing, but he held onto Steve and managed to whisper back.   
  
“There are others like me, Steve. Maybe not as good, but they’ll keep trying to duplicate what they did with me. They’re too arrogant to give up on the program. We ride this out… an’ we’ll groan over it later like that fucking shawarma.”   


 

“Was so… happy… when you showed up… in my apartment,” Steve whispered. “Hated you having… nightmares… but I was so… grateful… to have you next to me again.”   
  
“It was where I felt safest,” Bucky whispered back, digging his metal fingers into the floor to keep from sobbing.    
  
There was no reply as Steve’s body began to shudder in Bucky’s arms. Bucky gritted his teeth and held on, burying his face into Steve’s hair. The spasms grew worse, and Bucky’s vision swam as tears welled in his eyes.    
  
“Shhh,” he soothed. He blinked as he thought he heard wracking coughing. In the far corner, the Philco ice box beckoned to him. A Coke would feel so good flowing over his parched throat, but he couldn’t let go of Steve until the coughing fit ceased. Once he got that raise, they wouldn’t have to worry about drafts anymore and Steve would be okay. He’d talk to his boss at the docks again, make him understand how much he needed that extra money.   
  
“S’okay, Stevie… It’ll pass… Just gotta warm ya up… I’ll find a way to get us that other apartment soon, I swear...”   
  
The shaking finally stopped and Steve felt warm again. Bucky tucked his face into the blond hair and sighed with relief that the coughing fit was over. He managed a smile before his vision tunneled, then faded.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TAG: Major Character Death
> 
> Seriously though, if you just spoiled yourself by peeking, it's NOT how it sounds, I promise.  
> _________________________________________________________________________________________
> 
> This is the last chapter of "This Is A Shit Mission", but fear not! It's not the end of this AU. I've already got the first chapter of its sequel (Part IV) written and will post it no later than Tuesday. For those of you that may not have noticed, Shit Mission has already become a series since I've added two stand-alone short stories to flesh out the AU. Part I is Steve and Bucky meeting as kids. Part II is Bucky coming back to Steve after their confrontation on the helicarrier. These are referenced in spots in this story and the next, but you can still use context if you haven't read them yet. It's possible I could add more glimpses of their lives in this AU if there's enough interest, but Part IV obviously takes priority. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback makes my day! Leave it here or on tumblr (or both if you're feeling truly fiesty!):  
> http://barquebatch.tumblr.com/


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